


Captivate

by KissedByNightshade



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, More characters added as necessary - Freeform, Platonic Relationships, Sort of modern setting, Time Travel, major character death but they get better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23275153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissedByNightshade/pseuds/KissedByNightshade
Summary: Revival - the power to change fate. Each time it occurs, Kira Izuru is sent spiraling backwards in time to confront and prevent tragedy before it happens. It's the one exceptional thing about him, living an otherwise mediocre life.When the unthinkable happens, Izuru finds himself desperately facing down the events of his own childhood. Can he change the course of events before they happen, or is too late?
Relationships: Kira Izuru & Abarai Renji, Kira Izuru & Hinamori Momo, Kira Izuru & Hisagi Shuuhei, Kira Izuru & Matsumoto Rangiku
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13





	1. [CHAPTER 1 | PROLOGUE]

**Author's Note:**

> Captivate was inspired by ERASED, the manga and anime. If you've not seen it, I highly recommend it, but it is certainly not required to read this story. If you have seen it, rest assured that there are some twists and turns beyond your expectations as well.
> 
> Take care while reading, and enjoy.
> 
> [Chapter warnings: referenced alcohol abuse; character death.]

_14 December 2005_

_Matsudo City_

Time drags on. It tugs at him like the wind on the strings of his coat. He feels its cold and biting yoke dragging him onward. Mechanical. Involuntary. No matter how much he resists its grasp, it still clings to him like the skeletal fingers of fate.

 _…the skeletal fingers of fate._ Kira Izuru almost stops in his tracks to jot down that turn of phrase. Decides against it. He is hardly short on inspiration for his poetry — he lacks perseverance, and time.

At age twenty-five, he feels like he hardly has any time left.

On a day like today, the half-hour trek through Matsudo City to his workplace leaves him dreaming of better ways to spend his time. He could be at home right now. He could soak his feet in his washtub, assuming that the water heater hasn’t broken again. He could write a full-fledged poem and carefully stow it away in the same place as the rest of his oeuvre — a shoe box in his closet.

Instead, he finds himself slipping on icy pavement, jostled by the crowd. Last night’s sleet left a thin layer of frost on the sidewalk, and though his twenty-block journey is no less crowded than usual, he has the added excitement of watching his fellow pedestrians slip and slide their way toward their own destinations. Gaggles of giggling teenagers huddle together like flocks of dark-feathered birds in their winter uniforms. Businessmen push urgently through the crowds, and mothers tug their children by the hand. Cars slowly skate by, their tires sending up small sprays of slush as they pass.

Izuru stops on a street corner to let a group of schoolchildren race past. One of them tosses a mockery of a snowball at his friend, only for the projectile to miss and narrowly avoid hitting Izuru in the head. “Sorry, mister!” the boy says, not slowing down at all, and Izuru just barely has time to hold up his hand in acknowledgment before they are gone.

The city inhales as though preparing for a great leap. A fleet of colorful scarves fill the paths ahead of him. Overhead, dark clouds threaten snow for the afternoon, but businesses still beckon to potential customers with their florescent and neon and hanging wooden signs declaring ‘Yes, we’re open!’

Izuru’s workplace is no exception. He can only assume the cafe is open, even on a snowy Saturday. Izuru would be inclined to believe that a full-blown blizzard wouldn’t keep his boss from opening shop.

Work, get paid, return home. Rinse, repeat. The endless cycle of time thrusts him ever onward, in spite of his misgivings. Everything happens according to routine, just as it did the previous day, week, month.

Except when it doesn’t.

Izuru fumbles with the door handle as he reaches his destination, cursing softly as the faux-leather material of his gloves brushes against the door frame and sticks. The closing door spits a cloud of steaming air, advertising fresh-baked pork buns in its wake. The cafe isn’t empty but it might as well be; a single old man sits at the window counter sipping coffee and reading his newspaper.

Izuru is late. The only other staff member in the building does not seem bothered by this, instead waving cheerily at him from behind the counter. “Morning, Kira-san!” Orihime’s smile is like a sunny morning; he’s never seen her look anything less than ecstatic.

“Sorry, sorry,” he mutters as he clumsily slips his way past the counter and begins shedding his coat and gloves.

There, the shelf where his apron — inherited from the last dish-washer, several sizes too large — sits; there, the time-sheet, already punched on his behalf. He looks up at Orihime in surprise, and she beams back.

“It’s been so quiet, it’s almost spooky! I thought you might be late from all the ice, so…”

He knows he should thank her; he does. And courtesy is often as much of a personality as Izuru allows himself to have. But still. Orihime is barely more than a stranger. Coworkers aren’t meant to give each other little kindnesses. They aren’t meant to lie on each other’s behalf. This misguided, well-meaning girl had best learn that sooner than later, he decides; so he merely nods, ties the apron strings around his waist, and heads toward the kitchen.

There may be only a handful of dishes ready yet to wash, but that doesn’t mean that Izuru’s day won’t be full. Take out the trash. Check. Confirm the dishes set to dry overnight were indeed clean and dry. Check. Wipe up the puddles of water from the divots on the tops of mugs. Check. Spray the crack where the foundation has shifted to prevent insects from finding their way inside. Check.

By the time Izuru finishes his opening duties, a pile of dishes awaits him in the dining room. Leaving behind his dish towel to dry, he emerges to bus the tables. Orihime smiles at him as he passes. The college-aged guy eating curry at the counter eyes her in a way that Izuru doesn’t like, so he makes sure to bump against the back of his barstool as he shuffles past. “Sorry, sorry,” he grates again as the student glares.

As he passes the windows, he rubs his thumb in a circle over the glass. Outside, snow falls silently and slowly onto the pavement. A truck barrels past, and the sluice of muddy ice-water it throws into the air seems to fall and land without a sound. Even the people nearby seem silent. The young boy waiting to cross the street says something to his mother, but no words come out; her response is just as muted. Cold, silent, and lifeless; a man’s cigarette glows a dark purple as he eyes the newsstand, the only pinprick of warmth among the dwindling throngs.

He turns away from the window just as quickly as his glance, and retrieves his small stack of plates. As he passes behind the counter, the student packs his notebook into his bag and prepares to leave. As the young man turns away, Izuru adds his coffee mug to the pile, and Orihime calls out, “Have a nice day!”

The dishes clink together as he sets them in the sink, and he rolls his rubber gloves back up to the elbow. This will be a long, boring day, particularly if their door count continues to be so low. And away he scrubs.

It happens in a flash of light and heat, as if a stray sunbeam suddenly passed directly into his skull. The thing tugs at him, casting him adrift in the thread of time. One moment he is up to his elbows in soapy water, and the next he is torn from his body, removed from his very soul. The world seems frozen for a split second, ice-cold and bleak and impossibly barren of life altogether.

Very suddenly, the stack of freshly-washed dishes is back in his hand, dirtied once again. He hears the shuffling of a book bag as the customer packs up. He knows in just a handful of seconds, he’ll hear Orihime bid the customer farewell.

_It’s happened again._

Izuru sets down the dishes. The thumb-circle in the window is already fogging back over, so instead he follows the college student to the door. Behind him, he hears Orihime say, “Kira-san, where are you going?” but he doesn’t stop, not even as the bitter cold nips at his bare arms. There simply isn’t time to explain, or to fetch his coat.

The snowfall sucks every ounce of heat and light, and if the clouds overhead have anything to suggest, they can expect even heavier precipitation later in the day. Soon, even. But Izuru isn’t concerned with that.

Instead, he looks around. The college student is beginning a trek up the hill, covering his mouth with the fringe of a scarf. There’s the truck, barreling past. Too far away for him to do anything about, even if it is a problem. There’s the boy and his mother — are they in danger? Izuru’s eyes dart to the man; is he a threat? He seems benign enough. Further down the street, several teenagers press their faces against the glass of a book store. No, it can’t be them… _Dammit! Where’s the threat?_

At the top of the hill, a car turns the corner and accelerates down the hill, toward the shop.

Izuru finds himself moving automatically. He already knows the gist of what is going to happen, if he does not stop it — it will skid off the road and into a telephone pole; the mother and her child will start crossing the street too late for the driver to slam on his brakes; the icy road will catch on the tires and send the car hurtling through the next stop light. Someone will get hurt, badly. Someone could die. Unless he does something.

A millisecond, frozen, until he sees it. The car’s tire catches on a patch of black ice; the driver can’t turn the wheel fast enough.

The car skates onto the sidewalk. An eternity passes as Izuru, the hair on his arms bristling against the cold and the adrenaline, reaches forward and yanks the child out of the way.

They say that in moments of danger, time slows, seconds lasting minutes or even hours. It isn’t always true, Izuru has found, but this is one of those occasions. The bystanders turn toward him, alarmed, then turn to see the car sliding almost gracefully over the sidewalk. There’s an inevitability to its movements, even as the driver frantically scrabbles at the wheel.

Izuru feels the impact before he sees it — a great reverberation in his chest, followed by a crunch of metal against metal against concrete, against wood, against glass. He shields his face as a shower of glass shards bursts from the side of the cafe. He feels himself lose balance, topple over; his bare arm shoots out to catch himself, scrapes against the icy pavement.

After the initial wave of shock subsides, he starts to hear again. It’s actually quite loud, he notes with the same sort of impassivity that he might observe strangers converse in this same cafe. People are yelling. There are no sirens quite yet, but if he pretends, he can hear them in the distance. That’s it, really; but the yelling is very loud, and he can’t concentrate on anything else.

He sits up and looks at his arm. It’s scraped, but not badly, just reddened and skinned in places. It will bruise for certain, though for now the cold air keeps it chilled like meat in a freezer. Funny. The pain sets his blood flowing and keeps him warm.

And as he looks around, he sees what he was looking for — a small boy, eyes wide, as if on the verge of tears. Staring at Izuru, just like the mother who has her arms wrapped protectively around his shoulders.

Slowly standing up, Izuru nods at them. He opens his mouth to say something, but no words come to mind. So instead, he turns on his heel and prepares to step through the rubble in search of Orihime.

* * *

He finds Orihime, shocked but unharmed, hiding behind the counter. Beneath the flickering cafe lights, he helps her, and the two patrons of the restaurant, make their way around the smoking hood of the car, through the warped door frame, and into the street, where they shiver and wait for the paramedics to arrive.

It’s a long, boring process for Izuru, one that he’s stood through more times than anyone should. ‘That’s really unlucky,’ some of his acquaintances have remarked over the years upon hearing about his many brushes with death. ‘You must be haunted or something. How else does that sort of thing happen?’ He doesn’t try to clarify anymore; it usually only makes things worse.

By the time he clears the triage area, brushing off offers of more extensive medical assistance, the shop owner still hasn’t arrived; more emergency vehicles are still on their way, equipped now to help extricate the car from the wreckage and investigate the whole accident. Izuru doesn’t really want to be around once they start asking the tough questions, so he tells Orihime, “Tell the boss I went home, okay? He can call my apartment once I’m needed for a shift.”

She blinks her big eyes at him in confusion. “But… are you sure you don’t wanna wait around?”

Izuru looks around at the icy ground, at the yellow crime scene tapes that have the whole sidewalk blocked off; then he looks down at his arms, bandaged and then covered with his own coat, which he’d grabbed on his way out for the second time. “I’m sure. See you around.”

And so, ducking under the yellow tape, Izuru begins the long walk home, less than half a day after he’d left. He probably won’t even be paid for his time at work today. Just his luck.

It’s now just past noon, and the Wednesday lunch rush is in full swing. Izuru imagines that many of the people brushing past him are heading toward his cafe. They’re in for an unfortunate surprise. He takes the time to feel sorry for them, before reverting to self-pity. The businessmen, at least, have a job to return to after lunch. He, on the other hand, has no idea when — or if — the cafe will open again.

No one _wants_ to be a wage-worker when they grow up. He’s had no illusions about the kind of life he might live, not since he graduated high school, at the top of his class and very, very lonely. There was no money for him to fall back on, no scholarship he cared to get. He just wanted to write poetry.

_For all the good a dream like that did me._

Hands jammed deep in his coat pockets, Izuru allows the rushing crowd to flow around him, a stone in the flow of the river. Pellets of ice are beginning to pelt him on the neck and back, tinkling against nearby windows and clinking off of parked cars.

At what point does he decide to stop caring? If he can’t pay rent, he’ll be evicted. So what? His apartment is just one step up from a hole in the wall; he has nothing of worth to his name. Maybe he should be more concerned. Paycheck-to-paycheck, and here he is without work for at least a week or two. It’ll be a miracle if he survives the winter like this.

He pushes all thought from his head and keeps pushing forward. He’ll figure out what to do once he gets home.

By the time he makes it that far, the light hail has stopped, leaving behind ominous grey clouds and flowerbeds filled with tiny chunks of ice. Bereft of the businesspeople that fill the downtown area of Matsudo City, Izuru takes the time to peek at the houses and shops that he passes. Still open, most of them, though light on customers. Izuru wonders if he should try and get a second job. Maybe he can deliver pizzas. Maybe he can staff a convenience store. Maybe he can wear one of those full-body costumes and stand on a street corner advertising god-knows-what. Maybe he can—

He climbs a steep, slick hill and has to stop thinking in order to catch his breath. He wonders ruefully if he even still has an inhaler, and whether or not he should be carrying it with him on days like today.

Half an hour of walking to work. Half an hour home. By the time Izuru can see his apartment building in the distance, he isn’t sure if his extremities have warmed up from exertion, or if they’ve gone completely numb from the cold. He doesn’t have time to think on it too hard, though; for just at that moment, a cat darts across the road and jumps up on the small stone wall. Watching him.

_A cat…?_

It’s a little thing, all fur and exposed joints. Calico colorings, with an orange-and-black patch covering one side of its face. As he approaches, though, it hops down and trots in front of him, tail flicking inquisitively as it goes.

Izuru pauses to watch it for a moment, then glances ahead toward the apartment complex. Three floors, with each narrow apartment laid out side-by-side and arranged into an open rectangle. Parking lot, almost completely empty most of the time, in the middle of the complex, along with a garden patch, faded into fallow dirt during the winter, a single maple tree looming miserably above the monochrome scene.

And now, of all days, a gunmetal grey Toyota sedan sits parked at one edge of the lot.

Izuru sees the car, but not its owner. He walks over to it, just close enough to see that it isn’t spouting fumes into the frozen air. _Where is she, then?_ The two benches surrounding the garden area have remained deserted since the first winter freeze. That really only leaves one place for her to be waiting for him.

Groaning, he heads over to the stairs and starts to climb. _Might as well get this over with, then._

Third floor. Faded white numbers read ‘303’ next to the door where Izuru stops. He pats down his pocket for a key, but when he puts it in the doorknob, he finds it loose. So he just opens it.

Everything is normal. This space is so tiny, so compressed that he doesn’t have to look hard to find her at all. She’s there, sipping out of one of his mugs, legs swinging over the sides of his counter stool and watching him through the window of the counter.

“Took you long enough,” she says.

“Lock the door when you’re here alone,” Izuru chides right back. “How did you even get in?”

Matsumoto Rangiku raises her perfectly-manicured eyebrows at him. Sets down her mug, still steaming. “You think someone like me can’t pick locks?” She stands up. “Get over here, Kira. It’s been awhile.”

From a distance, she might seem a cold woman. Her mouth twinkles with the hint of a smile, but that does nothing but make her light indigo irises seem mysterious and cunning. He knows she’s capable of freezing someone where they stand with just a look. Intimidating. Impeccable, every inch of her from the smudge of lipstick to the casual-yet-stylish outfit under a cream cashmere scarf.

But Izuru knows better. In fact, he likes to think he might be the only one who truly does know better. When she wraps him up in her scarf and squeezes him with every ounce of her strength, he can’t imagine being anywhere warmer.

“Why are you here,” he mumbles into her shoulder; they’re the same height, but her heeled boots give her three inches on him.

She makes him wait for the answer. Over her shoulder, he looks at the rest of his apartment. The smallest studio apartment imaginable. In the corner, he can see the folded mess of his futon bed; through the bathroom door, he can see his clothes from the previous day, still tossed on the floor. The kitchen, while not dirty, has a stack of clean dishes on the drain board and a handful of dirty dishes in the sink. “I heard on the news,” she says at last. “About your workplace. Are you okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” he says, and he makes himself pull away. He wants to take off his jacket, but there’s no point; the inside of his apartment is hardly warmer than the outside. “But it’ll be a week or so until I can go back to work.”

“Well, then, everything’s not fine!” She purses her lips. Rangiku turned twenty-eight this year, but she can make herself look twenty-one or thirty-five on the turn of a dime. “You need money, don’t you?”

“No. Definitely not. I won’t—”

“Too bad, I won’t let you turn me down. Kira, I have so much money! I’ve got a new line coming out next year! Take a Christmas gift. I’ll buy you groceries.”

Her expression is cheerful, but Izuru can see her eyes trained on his as she studies his reaction. He wants to cry. He doesn’t deserve her hand in his business. He can’t lie to himself and say that he doesn’t need her help, but…

“Kira,” she says, more gently this time. She drops a hand as heavy as the world on his shoulder. “You can’t lie to me. I’m your friend, alright? Let me help you. I wanna spend some time with you, anyway. Let me do this, alright?”

Finally, cornered and feeling equally embarrassed and grateful, he nods. “Fine,” he says. “Alright.”

She clasps one of his hands in both of hers, instantly elated. “Great! I know it’s early, but let’s go get lunch, okay! We can try out a new place…”

The instant he accepted her help, though, Izuru felt a wave of nausea and exhaustion fill his bones like wet cement. “Rangiku—”

“It’s this cute little shop that sells curry! What is it, Kira?”

“Rangiku, I need to sit down, I feel—”

He doesn’t need to finish. She catches him and guides him to the futon, the only place in the apartment lower than waist-height to sit. Immediately she flips the switch into concern. “Oh, no. It happened again, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Revival?”

“Yeah.”

She’s the only one who knows about Revival. He hasn’t told anyone else; there’s no one else to tell about it. Revival. His special power. The only thing in this world that he’s good for.

The power that saves lives.

“Every time, you do something stupid… You have to be careful, you know? It’s gonna get you killed one day, Kira.”

“I know,” he says. The futon is old, but it’s still soft. He wants to curl up in the foam and fall asleep. Hibernate for a full week until he can go back to work. Not that Rangiku would ever let him get away with that. “It was only scrapes this time, but…”

“You think you can just, just go risk your life just because you have a feeling. There are other ways to help people, you know!”

“I know,” he repeats blandly. “Even so, I can’t help it. I just… jump back in time. I can’t stand by and let someone get hurt, not if I can prevent it.”

“You really can!” Rangiku sounds flippant, but she looks more serious than some people have ever seen her. “You really, really can. This is selfish, Kira, but I’d rather have you alive than a hundred other people. Do you understand me?”

“You… you might be the only one…”

“Don’t joke about things like that!”

What can he do except laugh weakly? Laugh, and pretend like that feeling is something he could ever understand?

* * *

It’s dark by the time they leave for curry. Neither of them has a great sleep schedule, but Izuru gets the impression that Rangiku’s workday doesn’t start until mid-afternoon and extends well past midnight. She makes a big show of stuffing her sketchbook into a messenger bag on the way out, along with a pair of earmuffs and a wallet.

Rangiku’s car is just as much a mess as the last time that he’d been in it; he wonders if she’s cleaned it at all. Not trashy, thankfully, just full of clutter. Izuru comments, “It almost looks like you’re living out of your car,” as he hefts a full-size wok off the passenger seat.

“Oh, don’t worry. If I were living out of this old thing, we’d be up to the eyebrows in clothes.” Speaking of which, Rangiku flings a fleece coat from the passenger seat into the back seat. “Buckle up, okay? You’re a liability just sitting next to me.”

The ice keeps the roads clear of other drivers, and the car’s heater keeps Izuru’s hands warm. Within minutes, the two of them can no longer see their breath in the air, although Rangiku does crack the windows to keep the windshield clear. There’s no heating system in the decades-old apartment building where Izuru lives; usually if he wants to keep from freezing in the winter, his only repose is a hot cup of tea or an electric blanket. Frankly, he considers it a miracle that he has electricity and hot water in his dump of a home.

A pop radio station plays almost inaudibly in the background. Rangiku’s headlights reflect across the snow on the medians. It’s not a long drive, but it is much too far to have walked. Izuru wonders where Rangiku learned how to drive. Who taught her. It’s not everyone in Japan who manages to buy themselves a car, and her background left her wanting for any kind of guardian to help her with that.

The tires stick to the snow as Rangiku turns onto a side street. When driving, Rangiku’s face becomes a solemn mask, intent upon her goal. Though she’d never say as much, she doesn’t talk or want to talk behind the wheel.

Izuru wonders about her often. Worries about her. In spite of her burgeoning career, in spite of her glowing personality, he thinks that maybe she is just as lonely as he is. Just as friendless. How many other people has she brought along for curry after dark? Is there anyone else she would show up to comfort as their whole world erupted around them? It’s not that he is special; it’s that she is.

The inside of the restaurant isn’t heated, but the cadence of a television playing the news alongside a small radio in the corner brightens the mood. You wouldn’t guess that Rangiku had never been here before; she slips into a booth and scans the menu for only a moment before she is ready. She walks over to the counter, orders the same thing for both of them without asking what Izuru wants, pays, and sits back down before Izuru has the chance to finish peeling off his coat.

“Don’t worry, you’ll like it,” she tells him.

Izuru fiddles with the fabric inners of his gloves. “I thought you said you hadn’t been here before.”

“I haven’t!”

“Then how do you know I’ll like it?”

She gives him a look that says ‘quit asking so many questions’. “Drink your water,” she says. “You’re probably dehydrated.”

The curry comes out steaming-hot and aromatic. Izuru can feel his insides revolt against the idea of ever being cold again. The sweet-smelling food plumes upward and turns Rangiku’s laughing cheeks a pleasant pink, and the dull lamplight overhead glitters through her hair, now chopped to the edges of her jawline.

“You got a haircut,” he observes, and she tucks a stray lock behind an ear. “It looks good.”

“Thanks! Well, you should get one too,” she says. She reaches across their half-full bowls and plucks the edges of his fringe between her fingers. “So messy, Kira! It makes you look so depressing.”

“Well, I am depressing. It’s just honesty.”

“Not true! You’re a delight.”

“Hah.”

Rangiku orders two more portions of curry to go, and they come ladled into clear plastic containers. Izuru takes them in hand and isn’t sure whether his gloves are protecting him from the heat or from the wind chill as they pick up their things to leave.

Evening has turned profoundly into night by the time they skate carefully over the deserted, snowy lane towards home. ‘Home’. What a strange way to think of the dingy little apartment where he’s lived for, what, less than half a decade? It’s unfair, really. He has no place in this world, none other than the passenger seat of his best friend’s car.

It’s a magical night, as far as mid-December nights go. Colder than usual for this time of year, but glittering with stars and city lights. Izuru lets his breath steam on the passenger window and watches storefronts and evergreen trees fly by the window. So distracted is he that he is taken by surprise as Rangiku pulls into a convenience store parking lot.

“Lock up behind me, okay?” she says, grabbing her purse and getting out of the car. “I’ll just be a minute.”

It’s closer to five minutes by the time she returns, a small paper bag in hand. She hands it to Izuru, who turns it over in his hands to discover a generous bottle of sake. “You don’t have any, right?” she asks, and he recalls the days of _before_ , with him just turning twenty and desperately clutching onto her coattails within a brand-new city. “It’s not good to drink alone, but you’re not alone now, are you?”

“Are you sure…?” He doesn’t drink too much anymore; it’s bad for him, and bad for everyone around him. Same applies to Rangiku, he’d thought.

“Just one bottle!” She pauses behind the wheel, keeping the headlights off for just a moment longer. Her blonde hair is ghostly-pale, and her lips curve into a small smile, illuminated by a street lamp. “It’ll be fine. It won’t be like the old days. Promise.”

It’s like they’re the only two people on the road as they make their way back to his apartment. Not far at all, really, but there’s not a single car. Rangiku parks, then unlocks her trunk to pull out an overnight bag.

“You’re okay with this, right?” She isn’t referring to the alcohol. Izuru eyes her bag, and then watches her eyes. Rangiku isn’t one to doubt herself, not for the whole world, but she doubts him. Or, at least, doubts that he would want to house her. “I wanna hang out with you, and I need a getaway. I won’t stay too long, I promise.”

He nods. It’s just like her to assume while trying to be unassuming, but he really doesn’t mind. It’s Rangiku, after all. And Izuru would give her the world.

That said, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of clothing contained in her bag as she unloads it onto the floor of his apartment. “How did all that even fit in there?” he asks, frowning and picking at the crumpled fabric of a blouse.

“Magic,” she says.

She takes the sake bottle from him and goes into the kitchen. This is a ceremony they both well know, and even if he doesn’t have the right cups for this sort of thing anymore, she pulls out two tea cups and pours. “Bottom’s up,” she says, passing him a cup over the bar, and he complies. Not the best sake he’s ever tasted, but not the worst, either. And it fills him with the substituted warmth for which he’d sought its company originally.

They take their time polishing the bottle off, too old and wise to chug it down. It still disappears, and as the hour grows late, Rangiku throws her arm over Izuru’s shoulder. “Sit up, pretty boy,” she says. “Legs out. I’m designing a pair of pants for you.”

“A pair of pants, eh?” His cheeks, flushed and warm, flare up as he looks at the graceful, sexy frame of a petite woman in a dress that she’d been working on for the first half of the evening. “You’d better make sure that I look at least that good.”

“Oh, not a chance,” she says. “Sorry, Kira, but there’s no way you could look as stunning as _her_.”

“Wow, gay,” he says, but he’s just a little too tipsy to be bothered by it, so he pulls down his pants and throws them on top of his growing pile of dirty clothes. “Whoops. Need to do laundry this week.”

Rangiku wrinkles her nose. He doesn’t have a dresser, so his closet is the only mainstay of clothes in the entire apartment. “No kidding! You don’t even have that many clothes; what do you do, just wear the same ones over and over again?”

He shrugs noncommittally. There’s only one way this conversation ends well, and that’s if he puts a stop to it before Rangiku threatens to drag him along on one of her shopping sprees. “What kind of pants are you going to design?”

Her eyes flash as she turns back to the sketchbook. “Something tight! Maybe tweed?” She flips through the early pages, and Izuru can see scraps of fabric taped and stapled to the pages. She frowns. “You need a matching shirt. Hang on, I know a men’s designer who would do you wonders…”

Fortunately, modeling for Rangiku doesn’t require him to do much except lounge back against his futon, legs splayed out for her manipulation. He doesn’t feel like moving anyway. Somewhere around 11 at night, he dozes, waking up periodically as she pokes and prods him with her measuring tape.

“Wake up, Kira! You gotta get clean now.”

There’s no one else he’d trust to help him take off the bandages on his arms, or to unstrap the binder across his chest. There isn’t anyone else he’d want to rub soapy water across his back as he lounges into the water of his bathtub. Rangiku is one who pries if she is allowed, but that’s okay with him. There’s no one else, period. Not for him. She ladles bathwater onto his head and laughs as he spits out the tip of his fringe, now sopping wet.

After she ushers herself out of the bathroom, after he lets the water drain from the tub and pulls on the oversized cotton shirt he wears to sleep, he pauses a moment in front of the bathroom mirror. Here he is — twenty-five years old. Unaspiring and unassuming. He has to wonder what Rangiku sees when she looks at him. It’s been seven years since he moved to Matsudo City, working dead-end jobs just to make ends meet.

Rangiku doesn’t blame him, for how he’s turned out. Even so. He hates how dependent he is. How much he needs her. He’s just unlucky, is all. Touched by death.

As he emerges from the bathroom, Rangiku hops up, having taken the time to spread out his futon across the floor and flatten the sheets to her liking. “Finally! Took you long enough.” The sketchbook flops to the blankets as she grabs her own towel and starts for the bathroom. “Hey, let’s do something fun tomorrow, okay?”

“We’ll see,” he replies.

The bathroom door clicks shut, and he starts to slip under the blanket but stops. The sketchbook is open to the page on which she had been drawing earlier, revealing the final product. He sees a mid-rise pair of slacks drawn upon the distorted image of his own legs, long and buckling at the knees to reveal argyle socks under some kind of loafer. Moreover, his posture is unflattering at best — Rangiku had drawn him exactly as he was, head lolling to one side, hair an untidy mess. He snorts and closes the book.

By the time Rangiku opens the door, he’s perfected the charade of sleep, turned on his side to face the window. He hears her pause above him, then turn out the light before crawling into the futon next to him. Rangiku’s hand strokes the feathered hair next to his ear. “Goodnight, sleepyhead,” she whispers, before turning over and away from him.

In all the times they’ve slept in the same room, Izuru has always found it astounding how quickly Rangiku can fall asleep. She makes it seem effortless, as though nothing troubles her whatsoever. He simply can’t manage that. He ponders, running the day through his head like a comb through his hair.

Where would he be without Revival? Izuru’s eyes follow the darkened lines of the ceiling, illuminated only by the glow of a street lamp somewhere in the distance. Uninjured, probably, though at the cost of many lives. A dozen, maybe. More. How many times has it saved people?

How many lives couldn’t he save, simply because he had no idea what was coming?

Outside, ice crystals bounce off the metal of the fire escape, and their music lulls Izuru to sleep.

* * *

_15 December 2005_

_Matsudo City_

_“…ected officials are working with local authorities to encourage witnesses to come forward and offer testimony against various crimes, with limited success. Gubernatorial candidate Ai—”_

The radio knob clicks off as Rangiku notices Izuru’s eyes watching her from his cot. Izuru rolls over, too sleepy to pay much attention to anything going on around him. Even so. Even so, he aimlessly watches Rangiku slip out of the sheets, cast him a gentle smile, and disappear into the bathroom.

It’s Thursday. He usually opens at the cafe Thursday mornings, but given the events of the previous day, and given the fact that he can practically see his breath just poking his head out from the blankets, he’s just as inclined to tuck himself back in and sleep until mid-afternoon.

But Rangiku would never let him. She returns soon enough, and a gentle push on the shoulder turns into an insistent shove. “Hey. Hey, Kira. Come enjoy the morning.” He groans in response, a gesture that results in him winding up with his cheek on the cold, cold floor.

After he returns from his own bathroom trip, Rangiku has set some of their leftover curry to simmer on the stove and served it up steaming hot over rice. All this, of course, to butter him up for her self-indulgence. As it turns out, Rangiku’s idea of ‘enjoying the morning’ is taking a walk around the block, feeding two cats pocket treats, and nearly slipping on the icy pavement.

He can’t feel his extremities in the crisp winter air. Even so, it’s a peaceful walk. They take a path away from the sidewalk and down closer to the over-frozen stream. In the spring, cherry blossoms clog its rapids; in the summer, it is a picnicking spot for lovers and families alike. Now, they are alone, allowed to pass over the bridge and stand in near silence, watching the winter-birds search for seeds and insects that simply aren’t there.

Once they’re back inside the apartment, Rangiku scouts out the contents of his kitchen. “Kira! You have, like, nothing in here to eat.” That’s an exaggeration in his book. He has two eggs left from last week’s dozen, a quarter-bag of yet-uncooked rice, some wilted leeks… His freezer is full of excellent things, too — long-expired vegetables, stir-fry mix, all that good stuff.

“I have enough,” he shoots back.

Rangiku sighs. “Damn, I can’t believe you live like this.” He is vaguely offended. Closing the freezer, she finishes rinsing out the saucepan from the curry. “If I’m staying for a bit, I won’t eat garbage, understand? I’d better buy us some food so I don’t go hungry.”

So that becomes their afternoon.

If he admits that his food storage is rather minimalist, the twofold reasons why become easier to consider. One, he has no money, so a dozen eggs and some rice is all he can afford most of the time. Two, he has no car, which means that anything he buys needs to be carried the length of the subway line and then the twenty-minute walk home beyond. Between Rangiku and her car, neither is a problem, so on the drive to the nearest supermarket, he allows himself to construct a mental list of everything he might possibly want, then pares down the list based on what he actually needs and will use. By the time that pull into the parking lot of the grocery store, his list is scarcely longer than what he buys for himself most store trips anyway.

But Rangiku has her own ideas of what to get. With a cart in tow, she methodically clicks down each and every aisle, focusing on nonperishables and frozen goods. She doesn’t stop there, though; fruits, vegetables, candies. Izuru doesn’t bother offering much in the way of feedback, trailing along and feeling like a child trailing after his mother, many years ago. He would never, of course, admit how grateful he he is that Rangiku can take care of him like this.

They push their laden cart to the check-out counter, where the clerk begins scanning items, handing them back across the counter for Izuru to bag. As Rangiku pays, he glances around the shop. It’s a different store than the one that he usually goes to, further away from public transportation, and more intimate than his usual fare. Only a few others have braved the cold to do their shopping on a Thursday afternoon: a mother and her very young son; an elderly couple bundled with sweaters; a man just older than Rangiku whose entire cart is filled with chips, soda, and candy. Rangiku makes small talk with the clerk, who giggles as she hands across the receipt. “Thank you for your purchase!”

Somehow, despite the layer of ice on the path and the four bags of groceries piled into her arms, Rangiku manages to look elegant and coordinated as the automatic doors admit them into the icy world beyond. Her heeled boots leave tiny click-marks against the paving stones as she walks. Izuru nearly slips twice trying to keep up, in spite of his measly three bags. _Leave it to a woman who designed her own brand to be able to wear it in any weather_ , he thinks wryly. What else would you expect?

The Camry beeps as they approach. The trunk of the car sticks, so Rangiku pulls it up with the sound of squelching rubber and begins piling their purchases inside.

“Seven bags…” Rangiku had kept him from seeing her total, but he can guess from what she’d piled into the cart that she had spent several thousand yen. To him, multiple months’ wages; to her, pocket change. “How long are you planning on-”

“Kira-san! Hi!” Izuru turns sharply. Orihime, of all people, is hurrying across the parking lot, one lime-green mitten waving back and forth in the frosty air. Rangiku glances over, smiles, then closes the trunk to go start up the car.

“Inoue.” Izuru self-consciously glances down at himself — out of his work clothes, he has just his baggy sweater, striped blue, and a pair of pants with a hole in the knee. His coat dangles pointlessly over his shoulders. “I didn’t know you lived near here… isn’t it a bit cold to be lingering like this?”

“Ah, I don’t live around here… I’m visiting someone!” Is that Izuru’s imagination, or is her nose tinged a bit pinker than usual, even for the weather? “I wanted to get a gift before I went over there!”

“Ah, I see…” Izuru stuffs his hands into his pockets. Outside of the cafe, he isn’t sure what to say to her. Or if there is anything to say at all. “How are you faring? Since yesterday.”

Orihime’s eyes widen, as if she’s only just remembered yesterday’s accident. “Oh, not too bad! A little shaken up is all. We’ll be back at it in no time at all!”

She beams with delight, as if she’s just shared a delightful joke with him. The prospect of spending any amount of time without work, even living off of Rangiku’s credit card, makes him feel a bit queasy, but Orihime’s enthusiasm leaves him no choice but to smile uneasily.

Izuru has to think for several seconds in order to come up with something to say. “This friend of yours, have they ever…” He stumbles to a halt. He can’t recall Orihime ever greeting any of their customers in a manner that would designate them as a friend or romantic interest.

Fortunately, Orihime seems to know what he was getting at. “Oh! No, Tatsuki-chan just moved here from home. She’s never been to the cafe.” She stands on her toes, practically bouncing off the ground in her plush boots. “I’m sure you’ll meet her, though! We grew up together, you know. I’m gonna show her everything!”

The Camry shudders as exhaust starts to properly pour from its tailpipe, billowing up from where Izuru has been standing, chatting. But before he can walk around to the passenger door, the car turns off again. Rangiku gets out of the driver’s seat. “Kira, I forgot something! I wanted to get a gift… I’m going back inside.” Then she smiles at Orihime. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Kira?”

“Ah, this is Inoue Orihime. A coworker.” And then, to Orihime: “Matsumoto Rangiku.”

“Nice to meet you! Kira isn’t being too much of a sad sap at work, is he?”

“N-no, he works really hard!” Orihime laughs nervously, shakily. Poor girl, she didn’t expect Rangiku to pry into her thoughts like this.

Rangiku laughs. “Of course, of course! How noble of you.” She waves them off as she begins the walk back to the storefront. “I’ll be riiiight back~”

Orihime watches her leave. “Wow, what an outfit!” Izuru can’t help but nod; Rangiku’s scarf, gloves, and shoes all match in a way that isn’t immediately apparent except from a distance; her thigh-length coat glistens in the snowy weather.

And then she leans in conspiratorially. “So that lady… she’s really beautiful. Is she your girlfriend?”

Izuru feels the air leave his lungs as if forced out. His eyes open nearly as wide as his mouth. “What?! No, Matsumoto is…” How could he even _explain_ Rangiku? ‘Friend’ doesn’t seem to cut it, nor does family… “She’s just… I’ve known her since we were both growing up in the same town.” That should do it. “Just like you and your friend, ah, Tatsuki.”

Orihime laughs gently. “No offense, Kira-san, but under the circumstances that doesn’t help your case very much,” she tells him, then waves. “I’ll see you later, ‘kay? Take it easy!”

“’Bye,” he says as she walks off, headed toward a bookstore nearby.

Rangiku is true to her word. Within five minutes, she’s returned, a small paper bag in hand. “All done!” She beams. “Did you miss me?”

“Always,” he quips. “Now are you ready to go back?”

“Ready and waiting!”

She opens the driver-side door, then stops. Izuru walks around to the passenger side and is halfway inside the car before he realizes that Rangiku has not followed through, is still standing with her hand on the door frame, watching. Looking out toward the street. Her expression twists from self-satisfied, to neutral, to something else. Something fearful.

And then the bottom of the world falls out from under him.

“...around here… I’m visiting someone!” Orihime’s combination of bright pink coat and neon green gloves is even more striking the second time; Izuru thinks idly that only someone like her could pull off such a combination before his mind catches up. “I wanted to get a gift before I went over there!”

_Oh, no._

Izuru’s knuckles clench on the edge of the trunk. He hadn’t been paying attention… Shit. He looks around the parking lot, his hair whipping against his cheek like a slap to the face. A car leaving the lot, throwing up a spray of sleet to the sidewalk. A woman and her daughter pushing a grocery cart to a maroon sedan near the storefront. A man smoking a cigarette against the wall outside the bookstore. _Where? Where is it?_

Orihime watches him, her eyebrows crinkling, the joy oozing off her face. “Kira-san? Is something wrong?”

 _Yes!_ he wants to shout. Instead, he schools his expression, shutting his eyes for several seconds while he tries to think. “Inoue-san, do you notice anything… odd?”

Her eyebrows crinkle, and her lips purse. “Odd?” She peers more closely at him. “Kira-san, are you okay?”

He doesn’t respond. He has to hurry, he knows. Revival had thrown him back just the length of his conversation with Inoue. This also means, of course, that whatever he needs to do can be done very quickly, in under five minutes.

Not that that criteria narrows it down much.

“Never mind,” he says. “I just remembered that we needed to get, uh, leeks for dinner tonight. I’d better catch up to Matsumoto, since she’s buying.”

“Oh! Okay; I’ll come with you!”

The urgency of the matter is mutable with Orihime by his side. Still, he makes a point of remembering to turn off the car, pocketing Rangiku’s keys and locking up behind him before they cross the slick parking lot.

Rangiku is in the aisle with the books, flipping through a dramatic-looking manga. “Matsumoto… we forgot something. I need more rice noodles,” he explains, tugging on her sleeve as he walks up next to her. She jumps, clearly startled by his unexpected appearance; she’s always told him that he’s like a ghost, the way he can sneak up on unsuspecting people. The florescent lights overhead even give him a washed-out, spectral appearance, he assumes.

She frowns at him. “Kira! Do you have my keys? You didn’t leave them in the car, did you?”

“Here.” He hands them over. “Don’t leave without me; I don’t have any money to pay.”

“Of course,” she replies, rolling her eyes. Then she smiles at Orihime, who has also approached. “Do you want something, too? I’ll buy you some candy!”

“Oh! No, thank you; I couldn’t,” Orihime says. Izuru’s eyes turn to her, watching her expression and seeing just a flicker of wistful wishfulness. Surely she can’t afford much in the way of a grocery trip, either. “I just need a couple of things.”

“You shouldn’t turn down a gift, Orihime-kun! Tell you what; either you let me buy your groceries, or we’re gonna feed you tonight!”

“Rangiku-san!” Orihime blinks in alarm. “T-that’s very kind of you! But I promised Tatsuki-chan that we’d have dinner tonight, just the two of us…” She glances at Izuru, who quickly tries to mask his expression of horror. “I’m not getting much, I promise! Oh, I feel so bad about this…”

“Nonsense! I have too much money anyway, dear.” Rangiku’s smile is radiant. Beyond attractive, beyond seductive. It always has been that way when her genuine kindness shows through. Izuru wonders if that’s how she lets the most unfortunate souls into her life — because her own glowing soul shines through and reflects off of them. Reflects off of him. “Think of it like this; you’ll do me a favor by taking some of it off my hands. Redistribution of wealth.”

As the two of them make their way toward an abandoned cart to get Orihime’s groceries, Izuru wanders back toward the front of the store. “What happened…” he wonders aloud. Whatever it was, surely the danger has passed by now, right? It’s been five minutes. He peers through the frosted glass, the cashier nearby ignoring him as he tries and fails to wipe away the ice with his sleeve. Outside, he can feel the silence and emptiness.

A fluke, he decides. The universe, making a mistake again.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

* * *

_19 December 2005_

_Matsudo City_

When Rangiku cooks, she does so with the radio blasting the most offensively-pop music station she can find. Four days of her most unique recipes and Izuru is pretty sure he can recite the words to all forty of the most frequently-played songs. Or, at least, he could if he didn’t invest himself in tuning them out.

“Sorry, sorry!” she cries as the stir-fry hisses angrily and starts to char. Izuru props open his front door to air out the smell, to limited effect. Rangiku fans the faintly-smoking steam and attempts to push it toward the door. “Out, out!”

“It’s no good, Matsumoto,” he says. Shivering, he pulls the doorstop back inside and lets the door fall shut.

She turns off the burner and waves the pan around like she’s about to serve a tennis ball rather than a freshly-burnt meal for two. “Well, it’s all done! One stir-fry, ready to go.”

The radio goes to commercial, so Rangiku searches for a new station while Izuru dumps two scoops of rice, followed by two scoops of stir-fried vegetables, into two bowls. The darkened sky outside looms as Izuru lets each blip of a channel wash over him like white noise— _‘-al official fined for collu-’ ‘two wrecks and traffic slowed to a crawl on the freeway-’ ‘Don’t wait! Try Matsudo Dental and receive a free cleaning at-’ ‘-are still searching for a classroom teacher who went missing over a week ago near the-’_

_Click._

The impact of Izuru’s bowl against the table pales in comparison to Rangiku’s fingertips turning the radio off entirely. They are shaking, some imperceptible energy rocking them back and forth as she fumbles with the knob.

Izuru’s eyes dart from her fingers to her face as he glances up in question. Rangiku’s solemn gaze turns upward and she smiles at him, scooping up a bite of noodles amidst the steam. “Oh, we don’t need the radio; we’ll just make conversation! Eat up, okay?”

But the conversation doesn’t seem to come. They choke down Rangiku’s cooking with the same enthusiasm as if it were coffee grounds. And for a long time after their bowls are empty, he watches her stare out past the fire escape as if she has seen a ghost amongst the slowly swirling flurries.

It doesn’t occur to Izuru to comfort her until her eyes find his and she preempts him. “Kira? What is it?”

“Funny, I could ask the same,” he says. The wind whistles savagely. They will get heavy snow tonight, if they are unlucky. And he always is. “It’s not like you to be so quiet.”

“Oh, just… a lot on my mind, you know?” He does. She scoops up their bowls and prepares to take them to the kitchen. “Nothing a little sake won’t solve, of course!”

He thinks it might be good to stop her. He thinks that this old habit of theirs has done nothing to alleviate any of their problems, only delayed them to the point of worsening. But, what’s the harm? Or rather, what’s the point of stopping her? He’s indefinitely unemployed, she’s stuck in a rut and running from something, and whatever it is they need to talk about isn’t going anywhere without a little lubrication.

So she pours the glasses. And he takes his without complaint. And so it goes.

One shot goes down as smooth as a bag of nails, but the second goes a bit easier. By the time they have a third glass apiece, sprawled out on Izuru’s futon just to clear their heads, Izuru is just slightly too intoxicated to ponder what exactly Rangiku is avoiding with this little diversion of hers.

“Ahh, Kira,” she groans, rolling over to face him. “Your sake is really strong, yeah.”

“You bought it,” he reminds her. He clutches his head, which is beginning to throb.

“Hmm… Right. That’s right.”

Ice pellets bounce off the window; sleet, once again. They’ll spend the next day bundled up inside the apartment, nothing to do but huddle for warmth and watch the snow pile up. Or, at least, that’s what Izuru wants to do. Rangiku will drag him outside again, fill him with hot cocoa or hot sake or hot food or all three. He can picture the two of them now, wandering in some forgotten corner of the city as if the snowfall around them is of no importance.

Normally she might. Today, though, Izuru thinks that maybe she will want to stay inside, too.

“Matsumoto-san,” he grates out, his own voice sounding like a chalkboard. “Why did you come here.”

She doesn’t answer him. Instead, she huffs in exertion as she climbs to her feet. The apartment really is small; when it’s just Izuru, he can stretch his futon from one wall to the other. Now, Rangiku’s pile of blankets is an amorphous blob that encompasses the remaining empty floorspace. Rangiku trips over her own blanket as she walks toward the kitchen sink, fills her sake glass with tap water, and drinks it down like another shot, just all in one gulp as if she is dying of dehydration.

Izuru gets up too. It’s harder than expected — it’s been a while since he drank so much in one sitting — but it takes quite a bit to worry him, and Rangiku is worrying him.

But she is ahead of him, as if she is racing him to a finish line that he doesn’t even know about. Those blue eyes of eyes look a little less bleary after the water, which means she can think circles around him. Which means she can hide whatever she wants, and he can’t do anything about it.

He slumps into one of his dining chairs, and she laughs from the other side of the bar. “Ahh, Kira, you’re funny,” Rangiku says, leaning over and letting her scarf cascade over the side and into his lap. “Don’t worry about me, okay? You worry too much.”

“Sometimes,” he mumbles, “I don’t think I worry enough.”

Her laugh is forced, but he isn’t watching her closely enough to know what her stare means. His cerulean eyes meet her cobalt, or perhaps it’s the other way around?

“We’ve known each other for so long,” she says, as if reading his thoughts.

He nods, and she fills his glass with water too. He sups it gently, nursing his head still. He counts to himself. “In three years or so, you’ll have known me for longer than my mother did,” he comments, and it makes him distantly sad how casual a statement that is.

“Hmm,” she muses. “I knew someone for longer, but not by much.” She splashes her water into the sink and watches droplets flatten themselves against the stainless steel. “Kira, do you remember when we were kids?”

“Well, yes.”

“Do you remember that… that thing that happened?” Her eyebrows forestall him, pinched together so profoundly. “You were in, ah, middle school. Eighth grade, I think.”

Izuru nods, looking down. Of course he remembers; he knows the exact days — October 15th; October 26th. He will never forget them. “What about it?”

“Oh,” she says. “Nothing much. It’s just sad, is all.”

“Yeah.”

It doesn’t seem like nothing much. She drops the conversation, and he lets her. They sit in silence for minutes, though it feels like hours, until finally Izuru gives up on any shred of explanation. This is what they’ve become. A pair of tragedies, lost in memory. At least Rangiku has her career to look forward to.

October 15. October 26. The silence does nothing to stop him thinking of those dates, nor do they stop him thinking of how different everything could be, if only he’d known what to do. Been prepared, or understood Revival. It’s the only special thing about him, really.

He turns over. The rustling of the sheets fades against the slow creaking of the fire escape, just beyond the window pane. This will be a long, restless night, spent fearful of bad dreams and worse memories. It’s his curse. Not his alone, but his nonetheless.

But don’t ask him; look at Rangiku, whose body in her own cot is entirely too still and too quiet for any kind of rest.

* * *

_He follows a trail of autumn leaves to the edge of the water. The sky is a strange greenish-grey, coated and muffled with storm clouds that will never rain. Even so, the air tastes like sea and ozone. Like the season’s worst edge._

_Izuru has always been one for collecting things, and so he picks up each leaf instead of stepping on them like stones across a pond. They stack easily in his palm — maple leaves, whole and clean and green, green, green, yellow, yellow. Drifting toward a honey yellow bolder than sunrise, and then deeper on._

_At orange he sees something unusual — flecks of red, torn edges, here and there. He stops picking up each leaf. He needs to move faster, though it seems as though his legs just won’t push him forward. He feels small, so small that his walking feet become running and still, still won’t carry him the distance between even two leaves._

_There, at water’s edge. The back of a figure, gangly and tall. The water is a deep red, like pomegranate wine. The figure stares into it, and across it. Looking for something._

_Somewhere in this tiny town, a baby cries, and an old woman sings. In the distance a flock of birds beats its wings toward the south. Nearby, children play catch on the banks. No one seems to notice the red water surface, nor do they seem to realize that something is wrong._

_The figure turns around, and though Izuru can’t see their face against the setting sun, he knows they are familiar. A hand extended, as if waiting for an offering. Izuru approaches slowly, slowly, finally able to move, and sets the stack of leaves into the palm._

_A gentle nod. Face still cloaked in shadow. And then, without even a word, they turn toward the water and walk forward, straight forward. Rooted to the spot, Izuru can only watch water swallow them, step by step, until all that is left is a swirl of long red hair and a smattering of leaves on the river’s surface._

* * *

_22 December 2005_

_Matsudo City_

“That’ll be 5050 yen.”

The man flashes a handful of bills and a polite smile. Izuru counts out change and returns it, then slides a number across the counter. “It’ll be out soon.”

The cafe opened its doors again yesterday. The boss had texted Izuru’s phone that afternoon, letting him know his hours for the next three days — eight-hour shifts, all three of them, with the shop closed on Christmas and a promise of further shifts in the days to follow.

“Good thing you don’t have any travel plans,” Rangiku had commented dryly when she’d glanced at the message over dinner. “Otherwise you’d be screwed.”

“It _is_ a good thing,” he agreed, completely serious. “If I don’t get paid on schedule… that’s when I’m screwed.”

So here he is, staring at the dim interior of the cafe. The boss hasn’t even replaced the shattered windows yet, so the customers sitting at the far counter have to stare at sheets of plywood. Each time he sweeps, he finds tiny, glittering shards of glass and drags them along the concrete with the broom.

Normally he is happy — _more_ than happy, really — to work by himself, wash the dishes, scrub the pans, gather dishes and cups from the tables, let Orihime handle the customers. Today, though, she isn’t here, so Izuru mans the register and serves up the pre-made meals on square ceramic plates with just enough finesse to pass as restaurant-served food. He’s _barely_ trained in cash, so the boss emerges from his office every couple of hours to count the cash tray and bundle up each sum as if Izuru is going to pocket anything left behind.

So, yeah. Barred from even the sanctity of his kitchen, denied privacy and the snatches of fresh air from the back window, he misses Orihime.

Fortunately, it’s a slow day, slow enough to where even he can manage both manning the register and serving the food. Between the sleet storm the previous night and the boarded-up windows from the collision, not too many people seem to realize that they’re even open, and with Orihime out, the boss can’t exactly send Izuru out as a living neon sign, because that would mean he has to come work too. Couldn’t have that.

The hours drag by. He finds himself rubbing his feet during his break, rotating the ankles to keep them from swelling up. He checks his phone for texts from Matsumoto — nothing. He guesses he’ll just have to see what she wants to do for dinner after he gets home.

Thinking about Matsumoto stings, just a bit, just in the back of his mind. Even if she won’t tell him, he knows that something is wrong, and therefore he knows that she doesn’t trust him enough to tell him. Or doesn’t want to burden him. It’s not fair, since she’s taken on every load he has ever borne and done it with with a smile on her face. Not once has she hesitated. To her he is a friend, a close one but just one of many, but to him she is _everything_. The only one who has stayed with him through thick and thin.

His memories lead him back to last night, where frozen vegetables steamed in the microwave had served as the backdrop for another conversation. Rangiku had stared down at her broccoli-laden chopsticks and asked him, almost hesitantly, “Do you remember when your mother died, and you moved in with me for a little while?”

He nearly dropped his own bite. “Well, yeah,” he said. “Almost a year. I was in a haze. I had to drop out.”

“You probably didn’t miss much. University is a waste of time and money, after all.” She sighed and leaned back, chopsticks clattering together as she dropped them into her bowl. “You trust me, right? To take care of you, and do the right thing?”

“Of course I do. You know that.”

“Okay.” Her eyelashes fluttered down, and the shadow they cast made her look a hundred years old, gaunt and exhausted. “Even when I’m falling apart?”

“Especially then,” he said. When he is falling apart, he becomes nothing. But her pain is like a cornered mountain lioness. She will fight her way out of anything, fight until she can get back on her feet. “Are… are you okay? Matsumoto, what’s going on?”

She hadn’t answered. Her bowl empty, she carried it into the kitchen. Izuru heard the tap run, the swishing and pouring of water, and then she reappeared. Smiled. “Finish up, Kira!” she said, and he almost believed the enthusiasm in her voice. “You’re working tomorrow, so no drinking, but we can go out for daifuku! My treat!”

And he’d smiled right back, because her deflection meant that she is okay enough to lie, and he’s hardly qualified to help her either way anyway. All he has to offer is bad advice and his own company, so it’s a miracle that she puts up with him.

She’s okay. They shared daifuku, and she’ll be alright in a few days or weeks. All he has to do is be there for her.

Or so he’d assumed.

* * *

Rangiku’s bath is nearly cold by the time she sets her book on the toilet cover, squeezes the soap out of her hair one last time, and emerges, water dripping off of her like a second skin. “Hmm, this place is too small,” she says to the empty room as she dries off. Indeed, she barely has enough room to properly extend her limbs, and propping her legs on the edge of the tub as she preens is out of the question.

Still, no harm in taking advantage of the fact that she’s alone. Tossing her towel over her shoulders, Rangiku wanders into the main room. During the day, it’s almost decent-sized in here, with both cots rolled against the wall. She unrolls her own, letting it flop onto the floor, then collapses onto it.

She’s been lethargic. So sore and sleepy, full of hidden worries and alcohol, when she can wheedle it out of her host. Izuru has only been gone for a few hours, and already the silence is getting to her. She doesn’t want to drink. She wants to flee.

She rolls onto her side. Checks her phone. No new messages. Good; the radio silence is both alarming and comforting. It means no one is wondering too hard where she went. They took her at her word. ‘Split-second trip to Hong Kong’, sure. Well, fashion designer extraordinaire Matsumoto Rangiku running after the first opportunity to present itself isn’t any less plausible than the same woman running after the first sign of danger. Not really.

It’s important that Izuru doesn’t know either story, of course. If he knew that she was supposed to be in Hong Kong right now, he’d get curious. Start to wonder why she’s here instead. That boy is too smart for his own good, so of course he would know that something is off.

And if he knew the real reason she is here, well. Then he would be in far more danger than he can imagine.

When she closes her eyes, she can still envision it — the way the world slowed down, the slight opening of eyes as he fell to the floor, choking on spittle and foam. She’d looked up, then, seeking answers, seeking help… but instead she’d found none in the cold eyes of the bartender who watched. Who knew exactly what had happened to her drinking companion, even as they had argued.

_“You said you’d gotten out of all that! Do you know what you’ve done?!”_

Cruel last words, spoken far too late.

The blood had hardly stilled in his chest as she gathered her coat around her shoulders and fled. She knew too much about the companions that man kept to stick around too much longer after that. She was a witness. There would be no ambulance, not to that bar, not to that part of town. The night had whisked her away beneath the neon red lights of Tokyo. She doesn’t even cast a glance at those who stare as she passes.

Packing had been frenzied, of course. Underwear thrown haphazardly across whatever clean clothes she had, suitcases slammed shut and thrown into the trunk of her car. She needed to leave town. She needed to get away as quickly as possible, and she left evidence behind that she had done so. No point in endangering her allies within the city.

A creaking on Izuru’s fire escape startles her upright, and she comes back to herself. Guilt swarms her chest as she remembers who and where she is. Izuru’s home. Rather than finding a way to deal with her problems, she’d run, bringing them right along with her. Right to his doorstep.

She looks around. It would be generous to say that he’s at least doing well for himself, that he can take a little more trouble. Not true, not at all. No one deserves the trouble that she’s dragging along with her, least of all him. Barely making ends meet.

It isn’t fair. Thousands of fans, dozens of acquaintances, and here she’s brought struggle to the one person in the whole world she can count as a true friend. He doesn’t deserve this. Neither of them do, but especially not him. He’s already lost enough.

Her eyes skid over the shape of her hard-shell suitcase and onto a ratty old backpack that looks like Izuru’s carried it to the laundromat in hell and back. Dirty clothes spill out; she tosses those aside and ponders over her own possessions. This is okay, right? If she leaves him her suitcase, then that’s a step up in the world. This backpack could fall apart if you look at it wrong. She’s doing him a favor.

Multiple favors, really. Leaving him behind could be the best thing she ever did for him.

The mid-afternoon sun lights her feet as she steps out and locks the door behind her. Two or three more hours until Izuru gets home and finds the note on his kitchen counter. Two or three hours, and she has to disappear. Vanish, like smoke. Gone.

Her snow boots click against the stairway as she wafts down the steps and slips away, the opposite direction from her car. The hiking trail that passes behind Izuru’s apartment complex makes for a clever escape route, and she steals away like a thief. She doesn’t notice the snow-laden clouds prowling overhead, and she doesn’t notice the snow crunched under boots just out of sight.

* * *

The snow has slowed to a stop by the time Izuru pulls on his coat at the end of the day. Scarf, gloves, hat. Rangiku had given him the set for his birthday a few years back, a stylish dark fabric blend of much better quality than he could’ve afforded for himself.

Still no messages from her. It’s strange, that. Standing on the frozen street outside the cafe, he takes the time to tap out a text for her. Just something small, asking what she wants to do for dinner. Just something to glean the kind of reassurance he always gets when opening his phone to four consecutive one-word messages from her; as if his pay-per-text plan means nothing in the world.

Dusk falls. Izuru hurries down the street, the cold biting at his heels. The crowds around him thin even as he walks away from the commercial district, street lights growing both brighter and more distant as they are planted more sparsely along the sides of the road. A car occasionally splashes past, sending up a dull spray of half-melted, half-frozen sleet that barely misses Izuru’s ankles. The evening suddenly begins to fade away as the sun fades fully, instead consumed by the lengthening shadows across the grey concrete and the white patches of snowfall in the medians.

Like a misspoken heartbeat, Izuru takes a double step and then stops, panic coursing through him. A hand on his chest causes a woman walking the opposite way to glance at him with alarm, only continuing on her way as he waves her off.

_Something is wrong._

He rushes, almost runs, the rest of the way to the apartment. Climbs the stairs as quickly as he can without slipping. “Matsumoto?” he calls, knocking on the door to his unit. No answer. When he places his hand on the doorknob, it is unlocked and loose in his palm.

He enters slowly. The apartment is dark and, as he learns upon flipping the light switch, empty. Too quiet, after the week of light and laughter. The only noises are the dripping of the kitchen sink and a slow whistling of wind through the fire escape outside. He frowns. Something is strange, and usually strange means wrong.

No note, no nothing. Her suitcase is still where she left it, but her coat and boots and some of her stuff is gone. Did he get robbed? Not likely; there’s nothing worth stealing here. Even so. He opens his closet and finds his backpack, a ratty old thing mended twice over, missing.

_She took it, then._

He shivers in the cold of the apartment for a moment. Hand drifts toward his cell phone, then away. She isn’t a missing person, not yet. And if she ran away without telling even him where she is going, she definitely won’t like the authorities being involved.

He can help her. He has to.

Down the flight of stairs, back away from his apartment. His breath wafts around him like a cloud of fog, broken only by snowflakes. He tries calling Rangiku herself on the way down; no answer. He didn’t expect one. When he gets to the pitch-black parking lot, he finds her car, now nested among the most recent snow drifts, ice sketching pretty patterns on the windshield.

Izuru stares at the car for a moment. He isn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t this. Maybe this is a good thing. She didn’t take the car, didn’t hit a tree or slide off the road. On the other hand, that means she walked wherever it is she’s planning on going.

“You’re so stupid, Matsumoto,” he grates. It’s different for him. He knows he’s dumb, but Rangiku is so smart! She should know better than to pull a stunt like this. Where could she possibly be going?

Not towards the city center, or else he would have passed her. Not further away, either; there’s nothing but farmland and eventually the docks. But it would be so strange for her to set off on the frozen-over walking trail that he almost doesn’t pursue that option. Almost.

With no streetlights and no flashlight, Izuru shivers in darkness as the snow crunches soft underfoot. Any footprints left behind are long-gone by now, covered by the newly-fallen snow. He sees no one, not even any wildlife. By the time he reaches the threshold of the bridge, the frozen stream crackling underneath, he has his eyes trained on the edge of the trees, on the banks below, anywhere where Rangiku could have tripped and fallen and hit her head.

He needn’t have bothered. Across the bridge, passing toward the next prefecture, and the blood drains from his face.

Sprawled across the path, eyes screwed shut, lies Rangiku. He runs up, stumbling across the frozen ground, tossing his gloves alongside her. “Matsumoto!” There’s no response, and when he brushes the shock of hair away from her face, the skin is cold to the touch.

He shakes her. Her scarf and her cat-ear earmuffs drift askew as he hefts her torso off the bed of snow. As he pulls her into his lap, her arm falls to the side, revealing a knife — his kitchen knife, he notices abstractly — wedged between her ribs.

He screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Captivate began over three years ago as a NaNoWriMo fic. Having been tucked away for a while now, I am revisiting its rewritten second draft and finally releasing it to the world as it is finished. While the second draft is in its early stages, the first draft reached 100k words and was nearly complete before changes in the plot forced me to start at the beginning. Now that I will have significantly more free time, I am hoping to finally finish it.
> 
> If you enjoyed this extra-long Prologue (also deemed Chapter 1) please give Kudos and leave comments! Any love is appreciated.
> 
> Also, I'm sorry it had to be like this.


	2. [CHAPTER 2 | PART 1 | CHANGE THE PAST]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a horrible discovery, Izuru attempts to use Revival and finds himself in an unexpected time and place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter warnings: police, child death discussion, suicide mention]

He screams, and he keeps screaming.

Izuru scrambles back, falling flat on his butt as he tries to put space between him and Rangiku. No, no, no! This can’t be happening! Revival didn’t happen, so it’s not real. Right? She can’t be dead. Right? Just another minute and he’ll jump back, somehow able to prevent this altogether.

Ignoring the searing numbness in his bare fingers, he reaches out and tries to pull the knife out of Rangiku. His hands are shaking too much, and all he manages to do is shift her off a patch of snow stained scarlet in her wake. His eyes tear up as his shaking hand presses against her neck. _No pulse. No breathing._

_Dead._

No, no, no, that can’t be right. That’s his knife! That’s _impossible_. Had someone broken into his apartment and followed Rangiku? Had they waited for her there? His eyes whip toward the trees. Whoever did it… they could still be here. Watching.

Not knowing what to do, unable to move, Izuru pulls Rangiku back into his lap and pulls her close. The tears come and go, freezing on his cheeks and in the corners of his eyes. If they come for him, let them come. A world where Rangiku isn’t by his side is no world at all. He wants nothing to do with it.

Minutes, hours, centuries pass before he moves again. He pulls his gloves back on. He knows better than to think that Rangiku can be saved by medical attention. The only thing that can save her now is something that should have happened by now, he thinks. Revival. _Let it come, then. Let me save her. Bring me back to that moment—_

Nothing comes. Nothing except a far-distant crunching of boots in the snow, closer and closer, and the quiet buzzing of Rangiku’s cell phone, still lodged in her pocket.

On a whim, he pulls it out by the cat phone charm and slips it into his own pocket, clicking against his own phone. Then, he looks up in time to shield his face from the blinding glare of a flashlight, beyond which he can just make out the uniformed figure of a police officer.

“What’s going on here?” the man says, to which Izuru doesn’t bother saying anything. To him, it is fairly obvious what is happening here. “A disturbance was reported. I’m going to need to see some identification.”

Izuru fumbles his wallet from his pocket and struggles to pry out his ID. He isn’t sure if his numbness is more circumstantial or the sign of frostbite taking hold. Maybe it doesn’t matter. “She’s dead,” he hears himself say. Very quietly, as if there is nothing in the world but him and those words. And perhaps that’s the truth, because without Rangiku, he isn’t sure what’s left. “I couldn’t help her, she…”

He fixates on the officer’s faded goatee as the flashlight turns off of Izuru’s face and onto Rangiku’s. He glances over the body, the blood frozen at the place where the knife intersects flesh. Nods, expression neutral. Speaks into a walkie-talkie and says, “We have a crime scene. Send reinforcements.” The walkie-talkie goes away, and the flashlight is pointed at the ground. “Kira Izuru, then. We’ll be conducting a full search, but in the meantime I’m going to need to ask you a few questions.”

The police move quickly, very quickly; within five minutes, more officers appear with flashlights and kits, ready to case the scene. Izuru looks away. Rangiku is dead, and now she can’t even rest peacefully? The officer clasps a hand on his shoulder and leads him away from the scene, away from the body bag, away from all of it.

“Kira-kun,” he says. “I’d like you to tell me what happened. Do you know that woman?”

He swallows. Where is Revival? He can save her, he knows it, but he can’t think, can’t concentrate. If he can just focus, he can activate it on his own, just this once. “Please,” he whispers, and the wind swallows his voice. “Please, I have to…”

The voice is sharper now. “You need to work with me. Frankly, right now it is looking like you’re in a heap of trouble.”

_What?_

Slow, slow, stop. Thoughts halt like molasses.

“You think… you think I did this.”

The officer’s face, shrouded in the shadow of the trees, only proves Izuru for how much of a fool he is. “It _is_ your kitchen knife, there,” he says, just as the sound of a zipper places it in an evidence bag behind him.

It’s too much. It’s all too much. Izuru thinks that maybe he should run away, but his feet are frozen to the ground.

“Let’s go to the station,” says the officer. “You can answer the rest of my questions there.”

* * *

The road is awfully far away from crime scene, a good fifteen-minute walk. The officer does not handcuff Izuru; it does not matter. He makes no attempt to flee and no attempt to respond to the officer’s questions during their trek.

The journey blurs in the darkness. He focuses on trying to recapture the feeling of Revival, that hankering feeling like something is terribly, dreadfully off-center. As if the world has fled its axis. He finds himself in a miasma of it. An unending flood of the wrongness. Eating him whole. He’s spent most of his life trying to dodge his feelings of guilt and self-loathing; now they chase him down like dogs at his heels.

_She’s dead because I didn’t do enough to keep her alive._

It’s unwanted, unhelpful, but it would be so tempting to let himself sink into that loathing. The officer, now focused fully on the path ahead, doesn’t seem to have any doubt by this time that Izuru is guilty. And why should he? Rangiku was staying in his apartment, slain by his knife.

He could let himself be taken to rot in prison, or worse. It would be so, so easy.

_Stupid._

_You’re letting them win._

A hand presses his shoulder down to duck him into the back of the police car. Now it truly doesn’t matter that he has no handcuffs, since those doors aren’t going to open for him until they reach their destination. And by that time, it will be too late.

“Officer Starrk reporting into headquarters. There’s been a homicide on one of the walking trails in the north quarter. I’ve got two officers on-scene. Removing a witness into custody for further questioning.” Izuru turns away from the window and looks through the grated screen dividing the backseat from the front. There’s a muffled pause as Starrk receives a response from a man on the other end, then replies, “Understood. We’ll make it happen.”

The car begins to pull away from the side of the road, still parked near the scene of the crime. If Izuru presses his face against the glass and squints, he swears he can make out little lights in the woods, tiny torches searching for something. _The killer_. Or clues, or something to shed light on why this happened. They won’t find anything. He would guess they’ll write it off as an enigma, an unsolvable case, but here he is, locked in the back of a police carriage. They’re going to frame him. He’s already a dead man walking.

“Please,” he whispers under the sound of tires gently pulling on the icy asphalt. “This can’t be how it ends. Please, let me-”

A yank at the nape of his neck tugs him straight into the stream of time. Light collapses around him. Air escapes his lungs, pulls at him from all sides. It isn’t a blink and he’s somewhere else. Revival, but not. Whatever this is, it is a neutron star’s collapse compared to a sparking wall socket. He can’t move — the universe holds him in place, a marionette conjoined to a thousand strings.

And then it stops.

He collapses.

He isn’t in the back of the police car anymore.

Sniffling slightly, he crawls up onto his hands, then onto his knees, and just sits, dizzy and disoriented. This place is the antithesis of the one where he’d come from — bright, warm, stationary, quiet. The gentle chatter of birds in the distance is superseded only by the sound of flowing water, very near.

That was Revival, and he knows it. He had asked for it, pressed the universe into handing it over to him. And the universe’s reaction, delayed and sluggish, seemed almost an afterthought. It had to think about it, determine how it could possibly allow Izuru to save Rangiku’s life.

This is… unexpected, though. To say the least.

His feet clunk against solid carved boards of wood as he climbs to his feet. The bridge, five meters in length, spans a piddling stream that sometimes dries up during the dry season. Diametrically opposed to Matsudo City, here the trees tower over buildings, not the other way around. Here, the sun rises clear and bright, with only thin layers of morning dew instead of smog.

“No,” he says aloud, then covers his mouth.

The voice that escapes his throat is a child’s.

Izuru looks down and around himself, uneasily. At his feet, sitting at the base of the bridge’s railing, sits a blue backpack. Squatting, he feels the breeze brush his exposed ankles as he undoes the clasp and looks inside. Sure enough, there he sees familiar contents — folders of schoolwork, notebooks, a wad of gym clothes, a small spiral-bound journal he once used for poetry. In the future, it will moulder in a box at the back of his closet, nearly forgotten.

He pulls out the folder. That’s his name at the top of each paper, scrawled in a handwriting he barely recognizes as his own. That’s not what he’s looking for, though. _There_. A homework assignment, dated and graded. Mathematics. He’d scored a C.

That doesn’t particularly matter; he’s never been great at math. More importantly, the date at the top. He frowns at it, holds it closer to his face.

_That can’t be right._

Because, if it is, then Revival has taken him more than a decade back in time.

* * *

_?? October 1993_

_Karakura Town_

_Stay calm, Izuru. Try to stay calm._

More than a decade. Twelve years, to be exact. He’s lost twelve years in an instant. That’s almost half of his age. He might as well have been whisked away back to his cradle.

Knowing that — based on his height, his accessories, the short-cropped hair — he’s back in the body of a thirteen-year-old boy, it’s easy enough to figure out where he is as well as _when_. He remembers this bridge, remembers it well. He must’ve crossed it hundreds of times during his middle school years, each morning and each night. In his opinion, it was one of the nicest places in the town where he grew up. In Karakura Town.

 _Where_ and _when_ are easy. It is the _why_ and _how_ that puzzle him. And trouble him.

Revival. Hard to call it a super-power when it’s so circumstantial. Before now, it has never tossed him more than five or ten minutes into the past, just long enough to avert a tragedy. Never by will, never anticipated.

There’s a lot to unpack here. Is this Revival at all? How can it be, when he’d done it on his own?

_Get your head on straight. Figure out what’s going on._

He stands up, realizing in the back of his mind that he’d slumped over against the barrister. It must be a school day, and it must be October, given that his most recent assignment was dated September 30, 1993. Compared to where he’d just been, twelve years in the future, the weather is mild and bright, though he imagines that autumn rains will be falling soon enough. Nearby, a rabbit hunkers into the grasses on the banks of the creek.

The flowing water sparks a memory in him, one that he can’t quite place. The creek, he knows, joins with two others to merge into a river that becomes the Edo River, which flows into Tokyo Bay. It separates Tokyo from Matsudo City, where he will move in five or so years.

And something about the river leaves a bad taste in his mouth. He doesn’t remember why. But seeing it makes him feel uneasy.

Like an automaton he starts walking. A fifteen-minute walk, through neighborhoods that have grown unfamiliar with years; yet, his destination is as clear in his mind as the water in the creek. As inevitable as its procession toward the sea. Today is a school day, so he must go to school. And at school he will figure out what is going on, why Revival has brought him here.

What he can do to eventually save Rangiku through the hands of his former self.

The gates to Karakura Middle School stand ajar, cast iron and steadfast against the chill, and Izuru there threads his fingers through the metal bars. In the yard, other students sit against trees and on benches, their grey winter uniforms mingling with a few steadfast summer uniforms. Izuru pulls his backpack more snugly around his own shoulders, a suit of armor. It’s one thing to look at a few papers, but another altogether to see this place with his own eyes. It’s an impossibility. An anomaly.

“Kira? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He jumps and spins, and he might as well have, because before him stands someone he never thought he’d see again. Hair deliberately mussed and spiked at the tips, his backpack slung over one shoulder, and the edges of counterculture just barely peeking through his uniform in the form of a pair of cuffed and spiked bracelets. Hisagi Shuuhei. Izuru’s once-senpai and erstwhile childhood friend.

Shuuhei startles him out of his reverie by stepping forward and dropping a hand on his shoulder; it seems to weigh as much as the school itself. Shuuhei guides him through the gates and toward the doors. “C’mon, don’t just stand there. Why didn’t you wait for me? Your mother said you’d gone ahead.”

 _Mother is alive…_ He can’t think about that right now, he simply can’t. He tries to think fast and nearly bottoms out. “Sorry, Hisagi-senpai, I was… watching the sun rise,” he decides, internally cringing at both the words and the high-pitched, juvenile sound of his own voice.

“Seriously? Oh, whatever, you do strange stuff sometimes.” They’re walking through the doors. Shuuhei’s hand is warm and oddly sweaty as they pass into the entrance hall.

They briefly separate as Shuuhei goes to fetch his indoor shoes. Izuru hastens to do the same, fumbling to find where his cubby is but reading the class labels without difficulty. As he sits on the ground to unlace his shoes, no one bothers him.

As he crosses the room to rejoin Shuuhei, he hears him laughing and stops. He’s leaning against the lockers, elbow set upon the third row of shelves, and chatting with a couple of other students. Izuru squints; the girl has her back to him, so he can’t see her face, and the boy, towering over all the other students, Shuuhei included, bears a face he recognizes but cannot attach to a name. _They’re his classmates_ , he recollects, and then rips his gaze away. Something sour settles in his gut, and it tastes less like relief than he would’ve hoped.

He hurries away before Shuuhei notices him again and drags him into conversation once more. With his shoulders hunched forward, Izuru wanders the hallways, gazing occasionally at the spartan walls, the various bulletin boards cluttered with old club postings and sports event notices. Other students have begun to filter through the hallways as well, chatting in pairs and trios. He avoids eye contact and walks on.

Rather than try and find his homeroom, Izuru explores, making his way around the general areas of the first floor. He remembers, if he tries hard enough, the general layout of the school, and the places where he used to go to hide before school. Under the stairs. The bathroom on the third floor, normally reserved for the little seventh graders. The boiler room. None of those places appeal to him just now, and he needs to think.

His feet carry him toward the gymnasium. _Fine. I’ll do what I always do._

_Run away._

* * *

Water runs from the sink to circle and drain out of sight. It splashes against Izuru’s face, splatters against the porcelain, runs down his cheeks and clings to the mirror. Slowly it drips downward as he peers past it to examine his reflection.

Thirteen years old. It was one thing to understand the truth of it implicitly from his surroundings and the dates on the papers. It is another thing entirely to look into the mirror and see it in the roundness of his face, unmarred by great tragedy that will later hollow out the spaces under his eyes and cheekbones.

Well, he can see bits of it. Worry in the slant of his eyebrows, the way they crinkle slightly at each inkling that the locker room door might open.

Izuru remembers this place, full of boys after gym class, as a nightmare. Middle school boys are often skinny and out-of-shape, but he more than most, and that meant teasing. Gym class was a dreaded event, almost as much as the process of changing before and after.

He never did have a good excuse for changing every single day in the bathroom stalls. Nor could he figure out why the idea of even existing in proximity to other boys who were changing made him so nervous, not for many years to follow. He was in his twenties before he realized that being transgender didn’t preclude him from also being gay. Perhaps that knowledge would have made things worse at the time. As it was, he was enough of an outsider.

On the other hand, an empty locker room was a respite. A little haven, safely tucked away from the other students, who otherwise didn’t give a damn about him.

Oh, there were Hisagi and Hinamori, of course; but Shuuhei was always the popular one, and an upperclassman at that. Hinamori’s temper kept most potential friends at bay, but she had her own circle of friends, and her little cousin.

And on the periphery, there was Abarai. Only seen out of the corners of your eyes, nearly spectral. And then, in a flash, gone.

Izuru shakes his head. He doesn’t want to think about Renji right now.

Thirteen he may be, but his reflection in the mirror looks more like a ten-year-old to his matured mind. Baby fat still clinging to his cheeks, eyes big and wide, hair short and fluffy, undeterred as he tries to mat it down with a bit of water.

As for the rest of him — there will be a growth spurt in a few years, not yet underway, that seemed insignificant in comparison to the other boys shooting up like reeds. There are other details, too; under his shirt, an emergence just prevalent enough to wear an extra layer beneath his undershirt. Little things that no one had cause to know, except for his mother. Did he ever even tell Hisagi or Hinamori? He can’t recall.

He turns away from the reflection. There’s no way around it; he can’t keep himself from considering the situation at hand any longer.

Revival knocked him back in time. Not just the few minutes that he’s come to expect from it, but _truly_ back, back to the year 1993, his second year of middle school. A twelve year gap.

In his own time, Rangiku is dead, and he is taken into custody. And he’d tried for the first time to intentionally use his ability. To harness Revival.

What does it mean? Are they connected? It’s selfish to hope so, but more than that, confusing. No one ever explained to him how this works; all he has are his theories, and his theories suggest that Revival takes him back to the last possible point at which a series of events can change. Usually, five minutes or less.

But. Twelve years-

He straightens as the locker room door distantly opens, slamming against the wall and echoing against the concrete. _Time to go._ Izuru walks toward the exit, heart pounding, then ducks sideways into one of the empty bathroom stalls just as a herd of upperclassman tromps past, laughing and joshing each other. Izuru nearly falls off his toilet-seat perch as one of the boys shoves his friend into the still-swinging stall door, and he catches a glimpse of dark brown hair as the boy recovers and continues on, seeking retaliation upon his friend.

He recognizes these boys. The same age as Shuuhei, they were the bullying type. Old enemies of his, prone to picking on younger, weaker, more vulnerable kids. Even now, more than a decade older than them, the thought of running into them in a dark alleyway — or an empty locker room — leaves his palms clammy.

He waits until their joking is muffled by the locker room walls before slipping out of his hiding spot and back into the gymnasium.

It’s for the better that he wasn’t allowed to wait out the school day in the locker room or under the bleachers or somewhere else. He still doesn’t know what’s going on. He walks with purpose, making his way toward his classroom. The bell will be ringing soon, and when it does so, he needs to be ready to act like his old self. Ready to keep his eyes open and mouth shut, and figure out what chain of events he needs to cut off at the crook.

By the time he makes it to the eight grade wing of the building, nestled on the second floor between the seventh and ninth grade floors, most everyone is hurrying up the stairs toward their own classes. From a distance he spots Hisagi, his two friends standing side-by-side behind him as the three of them ascend.

Despite the door being unlocked, most of Izuru’s classmates seem to prefer standing and talking in the hallway to going inside. There’s no one in this crowd he feels like talking to — not twelve years earlier, and certainly not now. He has more important things to think about, so he pushes open the classroom door.

And he freezes.

Only two students are waiting at their desks. A short, chubby girl, her hair pulled back into a neat, cute pigtails, a book in hand as she sits at her desk and reads; and a gangly boy with bright red hair, his back to the room, staring out the window at the courtyard below.

Hearing the door open and shut, Hinamori Momo glances up from her book, only to smile at Izuru. Oblivious to the way his heart has suddenly stopped. “Good morning, Kira-kun!”

* * *

Consider, for a moment, that, frozen as though a snapshot in someone’s photo album. A boy standing in the doorway, eyes wide, the corners just beginning to swell and water. A girl’s book halfway closed, a bookmark lodged somewhere in the middle, her hair bouncing and a smile forming on her face. Another boy, half-cast in shadow as he turns away from the window, his uniform unkempt and wrinkled.

That moment takes forever, even as Momo is already moving; before Izuru can even blink away the startled expression on his face, the book is shut, and she is standing up. Her pleated skirt, which barely brushes most of the girls’ knees, drops far past her kneecaps as she stands up. She and Renji both are still in their summer uniforms, their white button-up shirts exposing bare arms.

Renji is looking at him now, too. Izuru can’t read his expression through the sunlight’s shadow on his face; any glance from Renji, however, is enough to make Izuru’s blood run cold. Especially now.

“Kira-kun!” Izuru is still frozen, just now realizing that his eyes are threatening to well up under their scrutiny, gazing at him from a twelve-years-gone classroom, their eyes so wide and unsuspecting. “Kira-kun, do you have the– what’s wrong?”

 _Dammit, I’m too expressive._ Izuru rubs his eyes furiously, noting too late that his nose has suddenly started to leak as well. “Ah, nothing. Just allergies, I guess.”

Renji turns away again, to Izuru’s relief, but Momo approaches him and grabs him by the arm. “C’mon, then! We have a few minutes; let’s compare answers!”

Izuru nods slowly, trying to remember how this works. His assignments are in a folder, and the folder is in his backpack. He draws the stack of papers out, sets them on a nearby desk, and begins to flip through them as though the one in question will jump out at him. Eventually, Momo’s hand darts in and grabs one. “Here!”

Izuru scans it. It’s a current events assignment, a research project. They’d been assigned to learn about the local government and next year’s election. He squints and scans through it. Cramped handwriting details the democratic process, the annual elections and the expected candidates. He’s only vaguely aware of politics even as an adult; the minutia of small-town politics from a decade ago intrigue and bemuse him as he-

“Hey, give me that!” Momo snatches up his assignment and starts scrubbing it with her eyes. The other students begin to file in, chatting all the while. “Read mine. Check it, okay?”

“Ah! Okay…” Fat load of good that’s going to do her. Besides, he can’t help peeking over the top of the paper at Momo herself. Full of energy, just as excitable as ever… and alive.

He glances at Renji, just long enough to watch him go back to staring out the window. Just the same as always, and yet the aloof demeanor — irritated, angry, untrusting — holds meaning apart from the personalized misinterpretation that Izuru recalls from his youth. He doesn’t seem angry at all. He seems-

“Kira-kun, you’re not focusing! And, what’s this about the incumbent always winning?” Momo sticks out her bottom lip and looks even more like a five-year-old. “That might historically have some merit, but this time the challenger makes Kyoraku look really old! Plus, he’s so charismatic-”

“Yeah, yeah, enough politics, Hinamori,” says a new voice. Izuru jumps. His head is starting to hurt from seeing all these familiar faces, so far after the fact; Hirako-sensei is not an individual he thought he’d see again, and yet here he stands, having quite possibly materialized at the front of the classroom. The other students, too; a pair of girls somewhere behind Izuru giggle quietly, and Izuru can practically feel Momo flush and lower her head. “We’re gettin’ started, so pipe down, alright?”

Izuru slides Momo’s assignment back onto her desk and retrieves his own in the process, just as Hirako-sensei begins to yammer on about garbage duty, and about how important it is to assist with collective responsibilities, and so on, so forth.

Renji is staring out the window, and Izuru is staring at Renji. It’s so hard to tell what he’s thinking, what’s going on in that head of his. People have always told Izuru that, when he’s thinking, he looks either worried or dreamy, presumably depending on his thoughts. Renji isn’t like that. Renji keeps his expression guarded, sullen. Perhaps it’s instinctual.

Izuru never really did get a chance to know him. And it isn’t as though Renji made it any easier, either.

The Renji sitting in front of Izuru now looks older than the pictures he remembers from the funeral. School photos, taken at the start of each year; the most recent from the beginning of this year. It had been a quiet, understated affair. A leaf-filled courtyard, Izuru’s mother with an arm around his shoulders. A mere handful of mourners, all teenagers, mostly high-school-aged. A couple of subdued adults, not grief-stricken — surely not Renji’s parents? No, Izuru is quite certain they were not.

He recalls Momo’s funeral quite a bit more clearly, more bitingly — her grandmother holding the hand of Momo’s young cousin, sheets of rain covering the same courtyard as they tried to shield the funeral rites from the sky. In the end, they’d had no choice but to move the proceedings into a little stone gazebo while they waited for the rain to subside.

Izuru remembers biting back bitter tears as he stared at Shuuhei’s shoes next to his own, tuning out the awful words, claiming that she’d been lost so tragically, that her time had not come yet. Shuuhei looked pale as a sheet, completely numb; Izuru could hardly blame him, but for himself there was white fury and fear, all wrapped up in one.

He knew they hadn’t done it. He’d known that as surely as he knew his own name.

In the present, a bell rings. Izuru jerks out of his stupor, sitting upright as most of his peers around him get out of their desk, preferring to mill around the classroom and hallway for the brief moments before their first teacher arrives for lessons. Renji doesn’t move. Izuru sits up a little straighter and realizes that, hunched over on his desk, the red-haired boy is napping.

Izuru’s distinct frown softens slightly, then his eyes narrow. Is this the path to saving Rangiku? Three deaths, each with a disappearance, a dead body, and a false accusation. Is Rangiku’s death, twelve years in the future, less than a week after she’d alluded to the deaths and then changed the subject, somehow connected to theirs?

Either way, he’s here now. Either way, neither Renji nor Momo deserved to die. Maybe they weren’t supposed to, either. Maybe he can change their fates.

So, if Renji didn’t kill Renji, and Momo didn’t kill Momo, then who did?


	3. [CHAPTER 3]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Izuru wanders through a day out of his memories and slowly comes to terms with what it is he must do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter warnings: child death discussion, suicide mention]

Time is a fickle thing. Time, and memory. The mind clings to both as a lifeline, as if remembering will keep them alive. Just an illusion of happiness, and the bitterest, fleeting reminiscence.

Morning classes come and go with the ease of lost time. By the time lunch rolls around, Izuru still hasn’t taken a single note. Instead, he must have memorized the precise pattern of wood fibers in his desk, as well as the arrangement of the room. He is trying very, very hard not to stare too much at Renji, or at Momo.

It’s like leaping into a photograph, even more vivid and alive than the real thing.

If fate has its way, both of them will be dead in less than a month.

He sits at the center of a tempest of his own making. Around him, the maelstrom of the classroom churns, teenagers making mincemeat of order. Girls sitting on desks and giggling together; boys wadding up pieces of paper for impromptu games of basketball; Hirako-sensei’s desk conveniently abandoned to the mercies of the students. And Izuru alone to observe it all.

Picking at his lunch, Izuru considers the scene before him. In truth, he can’t say he’s pleased to see most of his classmates. As a child, he’d kept only a few close companions, namely Momo and Shuuhei. He kept most girls at arm’s length for reasons he hadn’t yet fully understood, and the boys in his class were resentful at best, if not actively hostile. Even now, he sees one of the boys playing waste-basket-ball glance at him, sneer, and turn away again.

 _And that was_ without _them knowing I’m gay,_ he thinks wryly.

He has a vision, in his head, of a small blond boy — the same one he is now — sitting in this very seat, taking notes. He remembers a taller boy, one of the ones now cavorting at the front of the room, swooping down and snatching the notebook away from him. There were words, cruel ones, and the sound of paper ripping and crumpling. His notes, and the haiku he’d written in the margins, wadded into a ball and tossed high out of reach.

Shuuhei had never been like that. Momo had never been like that. And Renji, Izuru recalls, had never been like that, either.

Neither Momo nor Renji seems inclined to engage with their classmates, in general or on this day in particular. Momo has the latest issue of Sailor Moon open on her desk as she absently eats her ramen. Renji’s arms cradle his head as he sleeps, somehow both oblivious and hyper-alert to his surroundings at the same time.

They’re just kids. Just kids, just like him. Loners who deserve better treatment than anyone in this classroom can offer them. And, Izuru reminds himself, destined to die before the end of the month.

_Die, or be killed._

Time is a fickle, fateful thing. Living outside of its bounds, living within the previous split second, severed from its chronological continuum, Izuru knows better to assume that a reason lies beneath anything at all. Things happen. Friends depart, and family falls away. In the end, he will have only his regrets.

He remembers, of course. The last day that he had seen Renji. Just the two of them, the bridge, the wind pushing their hair into their faces.

Just Renji smiling that sunlit smile and promising that he’d see him Monday. Walking away with Renji still lounging there, wedged as he was between the two railings of the steel suspension bridge. Just watching, just waiting.

Just the glowing feeling, the knowledge that he’d leave Renji safe and alive, and that Renji would hop down from his steel beam and go home. And that he would be in class the following week, still alive. Not floating into the bay for some fisherman to pull up a week later.

By the time class resumes, Izuru isn’t listening to anything at all. And by the time the bell signals them to head to the locker room for gym class, Izuru has slipped all of his school supplies into his backpack.

“Hinamori-kun,” he murmurs to Momo as they file into the hallway, more a mob than a line, and start descending the stairs. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be making it to Literature Club today.”

“What? Kira-kun, what are you—“

But by the time she turns around to ask what he means, Izuru has already slipped away, easily vanishing into one of the side hallways and out of sight.

* * *

_You’re really gonna get it later, you know that?_

Truant. Izuru can count on one hand the number of times he skipped school as a child, though all of those instances had been to avoid gym class and the misery therein. Hopefully no one is paying too close attention, or else his shift in behavior might draw unwanted eyes.

Beyond that, though, adulthood gives Izuru more perspective than he ever had as a kid. Fate has a funny way of finding its steady path, like a river cutting through the valley between hills. If he misses school, if he dodges hardships placed upon him, even if he finds the cause of Rangiku’s eventual death, none of that will prevent it. Only direct intervention, direct opposition, can save her.

A gentle wind pushes fallen maple leaves on the path in front of him as he makes his way away from the middle school. Wandering, Izuru has no destination in mind, only avoidance and contemplation. He can’t bear to be in that building anymore. He can’t stand it, seeing Momo’s bright eyes and Renji’s shy scowl and knowing that there’s nothing he can do to save them, either.

_Almost nothing._

“Izuru? What’re ya doing out here?”

Izuru jolts upright, rabbitlike in his brief panic. Almost as quickly as it increased, his pulse falls back down as he looks down the road, just a little ways off, to see the lounging form of an older teenager propped against a fence post, looking out over the stream. Arm draped over the railing, he grins at Izuru and holds up an idle hand in greeting.

“Ichimaru-senpai,” Izuru says, and he smiles in return.

“Come sit,” Gin says, and Izuru obliges him. Kneeling on the ground there, he leans against the outside of the fence, facing the path. Side by side they sit in silence, before the older teenager pipes up.

“Why ain’t ya in school?”

“I left early,” Izuru confesses. Lying has never come to him easily, and certainly not when he was a child.

“Gym class again?”

“Yeah.”

The stream burbles a few feet away, and a young child gurgles happily in its stroller as its mother passes. Izuru watches and makes eye contact with her briefly before looking away. He hears Gin sigh gently behind him.

“Y’can’t just, just skip out ev’ry time you don’t feel like running the track,” Gin finally says, hesitating slightly between his words. Izuru tries to imagine it, the kind of person Gin is. To give advice to a thirteen-year-old, to sound so uncertain doing so. As if he himself hadn’t dropped out a year ago.

“I won’t,” Izuru promises. After all, it isn’t laziness or fear or his skinny legs holding him back from going to gym class today.

He has bigger things to contend with.

“Senpai,” Izuru begins, half craning his neck to turn. He still can’t quite see the teenager at his back, just a blurry figure at the corner of his eye. Bleached hair, eyes perpetually squinting, ratty old hoodie that somehow seems both too big and too small for him. “Do you think that people can change fate?”

Whatever Gin expected him to ask, it wasn’t that. He gives pause; he inhales, then exhales with one great huff.

“I think,” he says, then stops. “‘S up to you, Izuru. Change yer own fate. Mine is already nails in the coffin.”

The teenager pulls himself to his feet with a groan. Izuru turns and watches him stretch. No school uniform to speak of, just a baggy shirt and sleeves that fall down to his shoulders with his arms outstretched over his head. Izuru wonders whether that is an intentional fashion choice or the clothing of necessity. Probably the latter. He does not remember Ichimaru Gin as one who cared too much how he looked.

He blots out the sun, standing there, and Izuru watches him slip his fingers into his pocket. _A cigarette?_ he wonders, then second-guesses himself. Sure enough, not a cigarette, but the slightest bill-fold of a wallet. A 1000-yen note emerges, and just as swiftly folds itself in half.

Gin is smiling. “Do me a favor, won’t ya? Get me one o’ those grape sodas and some candy, and you get yerself somethin’ nice too. Deal?”

Izuru smiles, because he is expected to, and because it is just like Gin, to give a gift and make it seem like a burden. And because in spite of the situation, it’s always comforting to see an old friend.

“I’ll be back soon,” he says, and as he hurries off, it doesn’t occur to him to consider where Gin gets his money, anyway.

* * *

Izuru is halfway to the nearest convenience store before he realizes what a fool he’s being.

Literature Club will be starting soon. Shuuhei will ask where he is, and Momo will have to tell him that Izuru had backed out at the last minute. He’ll roll his eyes, make eye contact across the table, and then start the meeting.

All well and good, but Izuru still will face the consequences for skipping out. Shuuhei doesn’t hesitate to confront him about something he considers important, whether it is out of annoyance or concern. Or both.

Clouds roll in from across the river as he walks, and wind begins to stir small waves in the water. Hand clutching the 1000-yen bill, he hopes against hope that the rain will wait until he arrives at his destination.

As usual, it is too much to get his hopes up.

The sky rumbles hungrily, and as the rain droplets begin to pelt from the sky, Izuru abandons his leisurely pace and sprints as best he can. He is no runner, even as an adult, and as a child he had been as sedentary as he could manage. The harsh relief of the storm makes it clear that nothing has changed in that regard, that running like this means flailing arms, aching legs, and the barest traces of undiagnosed asthma sneaking up on him.

By the time he makes it to the shopping center, his would-be gym class is almost over, and he’s given himself a workout anyway. Soaking wet, he huddles under the awning of a bakery, now closed for the day, before making his way across the mostly-empty street to the convenience store.

The air conditioner plasters his hair to his forehead and sends goosebumps along his arms as he walks in. More than a convenience store but less than a grocery mart, Izuru feels a wave of nostalgia as he automatically looks for the landmarks he remembers from childhood. There, the cooler for frozen goods. There, the pre-packaged noodles and sauces. There, the vaguely familiar cashier, glancing up from his register to the tinkling of the open door.

How many times had he been here before, cash in one hand and a grocery list in the other? ‘Get what you can,’ his mother would tell him, all too mindful that the money was never enough to cover everything. She’d always tell him to get himself some candy, too, but he never would. Not when there was dinner to buy.

“Kira-kun? School isn’t over already, is it?”

Looking down then around, Izuru realizes to his chagrin that, not only does the cashier recognize him, but knows where he is meant to be right now. “Oh. Uhh...”

“I told ya. We’re getting snacks for a club meeting, okay?”

Izuru’s gaze does little to disguise his surprise as he turns to see the speaker — after all, who would be sticking up for a truant middle schooler?

As it turns out, the answer is another truant middle schooler.

Abarai Renji, hair red as a brand, basket full of various crunchy and salty things tucked under an arm, spends a long second glaring mildly at Izuru before turning back toward the cash register.

Renji is a gangly teenager, all long limbs and big hands and feet; like a puppy who hasn’t grown into its own appendages yet, though something about that comparison leaves a sour taste in Izuru’s mouth. At the age of 13 (or is it 14?) Renji is sharp elbows and chubby cheeks, a mixture of soft and sharp that looks altogether out of place in the grocery aisle of the convenience store.

The cashier clears his throat, reminding Izuru of his presence. “Kira-san, my apologies. Send your mother my regards.” Izuru nods, still hesitating.

Renji spends a moment longer looking back at him, before passing him and unloading his purchases onto the counter. Chips, candy, more chips, some soda. The cashier begins scanning, and with the attention off of him at last, Izuru breathes a sigh and makes his way into the aisle himself.

It isn’t until a moment later, the shop door sliding open, that Izuru hears Renji’s gruff voice call out, “Hurry up, Kira. We don’t wanna be late.”

Late for what? Izuru almost asks, but then remembers. So they’re still making a charade of this supposed club meeting, are they? In spite of himself, Izuru allows a small smile to cross his face. And he hurries up, making short work of the small sum he’s been granted.

As he’s checking out, two sodas and two packages of sweets in hand, the cashier is silent, and so too is the street outside. Izuru still shivers from the water on his skin and clothes, but as he steps out into the street, the downpour has stopped, a kind of cold humidity settling over the city.

“You look like a half-drowned kitten.”

“Wow, I’ve never heard that one before,” Izuru retorts reflexively, then covers his mouth.

There, sitting on a bench outside a barbershop, is Renji, enjoying one of his purchased snacks. Mid-crunch, his hand pauses on its way down from his mouth, eyebrows ascending, before a wide grin breaks across.

Izuru feels a blush creep into his cheeks and nose. What a mistake, to even momentarily let his sarcastic nature make its appearance. What a nuisance that he can’t even fake his way through this.

Renji doesn’t seem to think Izuru’s embarrassment is out of character, at least. Still grinning, he extends his hand, and the bag of chips clasped within it. “Want some?”

His mouth hangs open only for a brief second, eyebrows still pinched in the middle, before Izuru says, “Sure.”

As they share a bench and a snack, the clouds begin to part, unveiling the blue and orange sky of mid-afternoon. Izuru feels his heart rate decline, his breathing slow, his mind empty. Perhaps Renji and Momo are still at grave risk. Perhaps they are destined to die, not in years and years and years but in a matter of weeks. But to say that it is a hopeless struggle is something that he can’t afford to think. Even if the echoes of that sentiment have already settled into his heart, long before the day that Rangiku died in the snow.

“-you listening?” Renji is staring at him, eyebrow quirked. Izuru blinks, tries to shake the melancholy off like water on wings. “You look like you just found out you gotta repeat eighth grade.”

“Do I?” Izuru tries to chuckle, but it comes out as a choked cough. A piece of candy tumbles out of his hand and begins melting into a puddle at his feet. “…Sorry, I got lost in thought. You were saying?”

“Jus’ that you’re lucky you ran into me in there,” Renji says. “Adults around here… they don’t like it when kids skip school. Was that your first time or something?”

“…more or less,” Izuru says carefully. No need to get too specific about whether he has or has not skipped school before. “What about you? Why isn’t skipping school a problem for you, then?”

Renji snorts. It’s a sound of disdain, of untethered resentment toward the status quo. Izuru knows it well. “Guess my education isn’t quite as important. That, or he really thinks I’m getting snacks for the basketball team every couple days.”

Izuru looks sharply up at Renji. “What do you mean? Of course it’s important.”

“It’s just,” Renji says, “the way it is.”

He doesn’t ask. He can’t afford to ask. His tongue grows numb in his mouth as he bites into it, staring down at his shoes. The answer is there in front of him, and yet he can’t quite put the pieces together.

Izuru stares at his shoes, and Renji stares at him. The sky slowly dyeing itself orange and pink, Izuru is nearly ready to shatter the silence when Renji beats him to it. There’s annoyance in his tone as he says, as though inconvenienced, “I’m an orphan, Kira.”

And Izuru remembers it, once again, that day, that leaf-stricken courtyard. Subdued, not fraught with grief the way Momo’s funeral had been. An empty hole in the crowd where two parents should have stood.

“Ah,” Izuru says. “Right.”

“Don’t get all quiet on me! I hate that.” Renji is scowling. Renji crumbles a chip into his hand and tosses the crumbs onto the ground; they join Izuru’s candy in the puddle. “It’s not a big deal, anyway. Not if you don’t make it one.”

“It’s not a problem. Promise.” Izuru stands up. Maybe too abruptly, but he doesn’t know what else to do. Where else to go from here. “A-at least not to me, anyway.”

Renji nods absently, suggesting agreement, but the look in his eyes suggests otherwise.

Izuru’s eyes search for the horizon and find only the end of the street, shrouded by buildings. Karakura Town is so small, so insignificant. How many years did he spend wanting to get out of this place? How much does Renji want to leave? Now that he’s back, there are things he doesn’t want to leave behind. There are people he doesn’t want to leave behind.

“Abarai-kun,” Izuru says, the empty candy wrapper in his hand pressing into his palm. “I just remembered, I have some homework to get done tonight. That current events project; I need to add to it before I present tomorrow.”

“Better hurry, then,” Renji says, turning back to his snack. “You know Hirako-sensei can practically smell it when you’re planning to turn something in late.”

“Right,” he says. “See you tomorrow.”

“See ya.”

 _If you can make it to the end of the year,_ Izuru thinks, hands shoved into his pockets, hurrying away, _you can do whatever you want. Drop out. Run away. Whatever you want._

_Just survive._

As Izuru crosses the bridge for home, keen to deliver the snacks to their requester, Gin is nowhere to be found. He tucks them into the concrete storm drain just beneath the lip of wood. For him to find later.

* * *

Nothing is easy. If it were, Izuru wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. If it were easy, he would’ve gotten home early that day, talked Rangiku out of leaving. He would have graduated from university, made it as a nurse or writer or whatever he wanted. He would have talked Renji down on the bridge that day, that last time.

His footsteps match a heartbeat tempo as he makes his way across the threshold of the bridge and starts off toward home. Mindful of the fact that Literature Club is probably just about over, he ducks down a side street into a muddy alleyway. Bad enough that he missed their daily meeting of the minds; worse if he comes across Shuuhei in his current state. Confused, distressed, apprehensive. Even now, he can imagine Shuuhei’s determined prying into his absence.

It’s a soft evening; the bright orange of the sunset, the deep purple of the eastern sky as it crosses over into nighttime. The path before him gently illuminates itself, and he almost pauses in the middle of the street.

It’s the kind of evening so similar to the one from his dreams — the night he’d seen Renji on the bridge. The last night.

He recalls the blackened shadow of Abarai Renji’s hair, whipping in the wind as he perches on the steel beam over the river. Almost picturesque, removed from the scabs of his knuckles and wrinkled clothes. Minus the scuffles next to the middle school dumpsters, minus the mean streak of his tongue when confronted. Just Renji.

Sometimes, in the dreams, he walks away before the end, unable to bear that encounter. Sometimes, he stays just there until the waking hour, hoping that his presence will put pause to what he now knows happens next.

He doesn’t know what day it is right now, but October 15 is less than two weeks away. Far too close for comfort.

But he doesn’t have time to dwell on it too much. Before him, at the end of the winding street, sits another place he never thought he’d see again.

Home.

He stops walking, then continues on more slowly than before. It’s a humble structure, its ramshackle gate mouldering even now after the afternoon’s drizzle and its shingles beginning to peel away from the roof. He smiles, though, approaching the short front walk and gazing into the overgrown front yard.

_Mother never was much of a gardener._

Stopping on the path, Izuru closes his eyes and inhales. The sweet scents of wildflowers mingle with herbs that have overgrown their garden beds. He can imagine, in perfect detail, the bushes brushing his legs as he runs around the side of the house, beyond the back gate, stick in hand to poke in the mud. He can imagine sitting beneath the willow tree, homework ignored in favor of a book in hand.

As he approaches the front door, his hand lingers on the edge, and he stares at the slats. When his mother dies, this place will be condemned, deemed too dangerous for him to continue living there. This, his home, will be demolished, its lot left empty for an indeterminate amount of time. He remembers bitterly the paltry sum of money the municipality gave him in exchange for the house he’d been born in, the house his mother’s parents had built decades before. It had barely paid for three months’ rent in the city, and he had never returned.

The door slides open, though not without a slight creak as he steps over the threshold. Shoes slip easily off his feet, and he relinquishes his backpack to a hook on the wall.

“Mother,” he calls out, “I’m home.”

There is a rustling in a room adjacent to the kitchen. Izuru follows the sound to find the pantry door open -- but no pantry within. Instead, down the three steps into the closet, Kira Shizuka sits at a desk, a looking glass propped on her nose and a vial of book glue dangling from between her lips where she holds it.

She stands up just as Izuru looks down at her, still holding her current project, and sweeps the eyeglass off her face and onto the table, along with the book glue. “Izuru!” she says, smiling gently. “You’re early… Literature Club must have been short today.”

“You brought your work home again,” he says, in a voice that seems more matter-of-fact than accusatory.

“It’s okay, I can put it up!” Shizuka makes a show of darting back into her little office space and setting down the half-bound book and peeling off her apron. “Are you hungry? I can make anything you want.”

“N-no, I’m fine.” He thinks guiltily of the candy that he’d eaten not even an hour before. All this work his mother puts in for him, and he went and spoiled his dinner.

“Udon it is.” Shizuka smiles again, returning to his side, and pushes a stray hair behind his ear. “Did you talk about that Keats poem you read? You should see about recruiting some more classmates; I bet then you can talk more about poetry. I know you like it more than prose most of the time…”

For all her beaming and fussing, she somehow misses his weak smile and shy silence. Not in the least because of his own efforts, of course — he’s never had a talent for hiding his emotions on his face, so he just has to keep his head down and his voice even and perhaps she’ll miss the signs of sadness written on his face.

It hasn’t even been twelve hours since he was thrust into the past, and already this little trip down memory lane makes him feel like he’s aged another ten years.

“Mom, I have some homework to get done,” he says finally. “Did you need help with dinner before I go work on it?”

“Oh! You go ahead, Izuru. I’ve got it.” She beams again, as bright as a sunflower, and goes to finish cleaning up her pantry workspace. “Dammit, the door is stuck again! Can you…”

“Sure,” Izuru says, and together they push the door shut even as he can feel the warped wood creak against the hinges and scrape against the floor. “We should get that replaced…”

Shizuka nods, even now turning toward the stove. “I’ve told you to make sure never to close the door on yourself, right? There’s no doorknob on the inside. You’ll be trapped.”

“I remember.”

Izuru rounds the corner and retrieves his backpack, but when he gets to his room, he instead tosses it onto the austere wooden desk chair and tosses himself onto the bed. There he lays, still clad in his school uniform and the day’s sweat and rain.

This, one of the greatest burdens of Revival — that he must venture into the past, given the opportunity to set something right, and in return he spends every moment of it wracked with anxiety. Second chances simply mean more opportunity to destroy everything. And lives are at stake.

There is no avoiding the fact, however, that this is Revival. That somehow, it has sent him careening into the past, far further than he’s ever gone before, positioning him a handful of weeks before the deaths of two classmates.

It’s a long shot. Of course it is; how could Renji and Momo be linked to Rangiku’s murder, decades later? But Revival’s never misled him before.

He turns out his bedroom lamp and lays there, in the half-shroud of the evening, watching light from the street lamps slowly begin to filter through his curtains in place of the sun. Across his ceiling, glow-in-the-dark plastic stars light the way home. In spite of himself, he smiles at the memory of helping his mother put them up, pointing out where the constellations should go, and the myths that accompany them.

He wishes those mythical heroes could accompany him now. He wishes that Rangiku could be here; she would know what to do, how to make certain of their success. He wishes he could tell his mother what is really happening.

Alone, with no chance to stop the turning of the world, Izuru thinks that he might be doomed to failure. That Renji and Momo will die, that the chains of destiny will keep tugging him forward, helpless to stop them.

No. His fingers clench around his blanket. He will not let that happen. He will change the future. It’s his duty, his responsibility. His great and Herculean task. He is going to save Renji, and Momo, and Rangiku.

And he may not be able to save his mother, but she deserves the effort anyway. They all do.

Izuru sits halfway up as a hand raps on the edge of his door three times. “Izuru?” says his mother, her long blonde hair tied out of her face and an apron tied around her waist. “Dinner’s ready… are you okay?”

As he marvels at her for that split second, a rush of affection fills him. His mother, who raised him alone after the love of her life died. His mother, who enrolled him in preschool as a toddler under the name he’d plucked for himself right out of her storybooks, who had accepted his barely self-aware declaration that he was a boy. Who worked her fingers to the bone to make a life for herself and her young son.

He smiles for her benefit, then slips off his bed. “Yes, I’m fine,” he says. “Let’s eat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! Out of all the chapters so far, this one changed the most between first and second draft, so I had to almost completely rewrite it with new scenes and everything. I hope you enjoyed it!


	4. [CHAPTER 4]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Izuru begins throwing spaghetti at the wall while navigating the complex personal relationships of middle school.

_October 5, 1993_

_Karakura Town_

“Kira, why weren’t you at Literature Club yesterday?”

Shuuhei, as always, looks incredibly serious, a pair of glasses perched on his nose, framing two liquid brown eyes. On the table before him is a novel — Izuru doesn’t recognize the title — flipped about halfway open, with numerous dog-eared pages scattered throughout.

Izuru has his own book — the one that he’d been carrying in his backpack since before he showed up here, an anthology of historical haiku. A well-loved hardcover book, with sticky notes and index cards intended to designate which ones he would later try to emulate. If he looks carefully at the seams underneath the edges of the fraying cover, he can see the stitches where his mother patched it up after the book nearly ripped in two, back in sixth grade.

The book is set open in front of him, just next to the package of sesame mochi that Momo had smuggled into the club room, along with other miscellaneous snacks, ranging from healthy to teeth-rotting. They’ve pulled chairs, desks, and stools to center around the teacher’s desk at the front of the seventh grade classroom they’ve been allotted for club purposes. With such a small organization, it’s pure luck that they have a place to meet in the first place.

Across the table, Momo smiles gently at him and grabs another piece of milk candy. Her shoujo manga, and her sketchbook where she traces her favorite panels, lay on the table as well. She glances across at Shuuhei as well but says nothing to defend Izuru from the onslaught of his inquiry. Meanwhile, slightly withdrawn from the table, their fourth club member sips at a bubble tea and scratches out notes from what appears to be a study guide for the high school entrance exam, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Ise Nanao, a ninth grader like Shuuhei, has never been one to engage in shenanigans and discussions, unless they are related to the Literature Club itself.

Izuru remembers thinking that Shuuhei and Nanao could really turn the Literature Club into a force to be reckoned with -- if not for the fact that they had completely different ideas of what it should look like. Nanao wanted a book club, with assigned titles and discussions upon completion. Meanwhile, Shuuhei dreamt of introducing a writing component and working to publish anthologies of creative fiction each year.

In the end, neither came to fruition, and Literature Club turned into after-school reading time. And then Momo died, and the three of them sort of fizzled out. Too distraught to continue meeting without her.

“I wasn’t feeling well,” Izuru says, not untruthfully. “I went home before gym class.”

“You did seem kind of squirrely yesterday,” Shuuhei muses, his hand on his chin. “Do you think it could be the flu? Probably not; cedar pollen is really high right now. Did you have a fever?”

Izuru’s eyes widen. “N-no, it was just a headache! I’m fine, really.” Time for a swift subject change, he decides. “Hisagi-senpai, why aren’t you studying for your entrance exams like Ise-senpai?”

He thinks he manages to make the query sound demure and non-accusatory, but Momo’s eyes light up with glee regardless. “Yeah, Hisagi-senpai! You know they won’t hold you back a year, even if you flunk out — you won’t be able to spend another year with us no matter what!”

Shuuhei rubs his head, exasperation suddenly creeping over his face like a veil. “Jeez, you two are worse than my father… I’m working on it, okay? I come here to relax. Relax!”

Izuru smiles into his book. How long has it been since he heard Shuuhei joking around? A decade, he answers himself in his mind.

_His happiness is on the line, too._

Post Shuuhei’s outburst, they continue on in silence, each left to their own thoughts and words. Izuru glances across at Shuuhei before turning toward his haiku. In the winter following Momo’s passing and the subsequent shuttering of Literature Club, Shuuhei will turn to feverish preparations for his entrance exams, and when that does not satisfy his obsessive focus, to other hobbies as well. Beyond that, Izuru does not know. He wasn’t allowed to know that part of Shuuhei’s life.

In his book, Izuru turns to a bookmarked page at random. There, he traces the edges of a haiku with his index finger:

> _Summer storm turns to_
> 
> _ashen breezes in autumn,_
> 
> _shattered leaves abound._

Izuru pushes back his desk chair with a small screech and paces to the window. It’s not a large classroom, so the natural light from the twin glass frames is enough to keep the room well-lit during daylight hours. Now, approaching evening, natural light barely reaches the front of the classroom, reflecting off the chalkboard and the rims of spectacles. They will leave once it becomes too dim to read.

In the courtyard below, October leaves scatter across the path and yard. As indicated in his haiku, the shards of leaves trampled underfoot fill the dust like confetti. Some boys kick a football back and forth, and a pair of girls are sitting together under a tree.

And there, in the periphery, unnoticed and unobtrusive, stands Abarai Renji.

Izuru’s eyes widen slightly. What is he doing there like that? Renji doesn’t appear to be looking for anyone, nor does he have anything in hand. Completely idle, his shoulder propped against the stone pillar, hands stuffed into his uniform pockets. Then, he looks up to meet Izuru’s gaze.

The both of them are still for a long moment, statuesque, eyes locked as though daring the other to move first. Finally, Izuru tears his gaze away. Then he skulks back to his seat. Shuuhei frowns at him and says nothing.

By the time the four of them leave school, the courtyard has emptied of its occupants, Renji included. Izuru kicks at a loose pebble.

_Another day wasted._

He needs a plan fast if he’s going to save Renji and Momo. He needs to create a plan, and he needs to create it quickly. He has just ten days.

Outside the school, they stop, clustering around the edge of the gate. “See you two tomorrow,” Shuuhei says, waving off Momo and Nanao. The two of them split off and begin the walk to the neighborhood where they both live. “C’mon, Kira, I really do have to study for entrance exams.”

Shuuhei leads their duo down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. It’s a familiar journey, one Izuru has walked alongside Shuuhei hundreds of times, ever since they both started going to middle school. Two full years of making the same journey, of opening his front door to find Shuuhei waiting to cross the bridge with him. Of leaving school at the same time and stopping in to see each other’s families.

Now, with the sun setting, Shuuhei leads the way across the wooden bridge. Izuru peers into the storm drain to see that the soda and candy he’d left there the previous evening have vanished. Hopefully that means Gin came back for them, not that they’d been snagged by some delinquent. Some other delinquent.

“Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” Shuuhei asks, a pace ahead of Izuru. He knows him all too well. “You still seem out of it.”

“I’m… fine,” he says, and it sounds unconvincing even to his own ears. Predictably, Shuuhei pauses in his tracks to look back at Izuru. “Really! I’m just in… one of those moods…”

Izuru trails off, his face contorting into a frown as he realizes just how stupid his excuse sounds. Shuuhei raises an eyebrow. “You mean, like a ‘staring out the window and sulking’ mood? A ‘skipping gym class because you didn’t want to deal’ mood? That kind of mood?”

 _Ah, crap. Was I really so transparent?_ “It isn’t what it seems,” Izuru says, weakly. He’s out of practice, and Shuuhei had always looked after him better than anyone. Almost anyone. “It’s complicated. There’s just something I have to—”

“You sound like you’re quoting ‘Kira’s Anthology of Half-Hearted Excuses’.” Shuuhei sighs, pulls his hands out of his pockets, and throws a conciliatory arm over Izuru’s shoulders. Izuru fights the urge to stiffen and pull away. “Listen, whatever’s going on, you don’t have to tell me, just—”

“It’s one of my classmates.” The answer comes bubbling out before Izuru can stop himself, with such abruptness that Shuuhei pulls back so only his hand rests on Izuru’s shoulder. He takes a deep breath; nothing else for it now but the truth. At least, a small part of it. “I… I want to help him. I ran into him yesterday, and he seemed really lonely.”

“So you wanna be his friend? Is that it?”

 _Is that what I’m trying to do? Befriend Renji?_ That feels wrong, somehow. Renji deserves a friend, certainly, but Izuru can’t be that person. Not right now, not when he can’t afford to be so altruistic as to help for help’s sake. No, he has a deadline. And so does Renji.

Evidently, his silent hesitation takes too long, because Shuuhei sighs impatiently and retracts his hand. “Well, whatever.” They continue walking, before he adds, “Do what you have to do. But don’t forget, your friends will help you out. Don’t shut us out, okay? We’re here for you.”

Izuru kicks up dust underfoot all the way home, even after he’s bid his farewell to Shuuhei on the sidewalk outside his house. How unsettling, to walk all this distance alongside someone, and yet to know that he is more alone than ever in his life.

* * *

_October 6, 1993_

_Karakura Town_

Izuru looks up from his bento at the exact moment when a cookie is shoved abruptly into his mouth. Momo smiles serenely at him as he nearly chokes, inhaling stray crumbs and almost falling out of his chair. Finally, finally, he rights himself and catches the unbitten portion of the cookie as it threatens to fall from his lips.

“Mmm… i’s goob,” he says, then allows himself to finish chewing before trying again. “It’s good. Did you bake them?”

“Mm-hmm!” Momo perches on the edge of his desk as she eats one herself, seemingly oblivious that she had almost committed manslaughter. “I used fresh cherries, too. Can you tell?”

Izuru licks the roof of his mouth. “And agar-agar, I think.”

As Momo begins to go on about how hard it had been to get her little cousin to actually help her with the cookies instead of just snacking on the dough, Izuru takes the time to look around the classroom. As usual, the lunch hour means horseplay and shenanigans, though a few of his classmates are preoccupied with the remnants of as-yet unfinished homework. Renji, in the desk immediately in front of him, is doing neither. Today his head rests in his arms, crossed on his desk and wrapped in his gym shirt for a bit of a cushion.

Izuru rips his eyes from him as Momo puts her hands on her hips and says, “Are you even listening?”

“O-of course.” He sits up a little straighter, mindful of Renji’s proximity -- and the fact that his classmate is most likely listening. “Say, Hinamori-kun, do you have any more of those cookies?”

“Oh, yeah!” She pulls the plastic container out of her backpack; the cookies inside tumble tantalizingly to the top as she flips it briefly upside down. “I have plenty! I thought I’d bring them to Literature Club and share there, too. I even left out the almonds, to account for Ise-senpai’s intolerance.”

“That’s so thoughtful,” he says, staring at the tupperware, thoughts bleak, eyes dead. Hinamori is talented, kind, connected, a spitfire of a personality. She’s the kind of person who tries to right any wrong she sees… and yet, without a miracle, she will die. Why was she even targeted? It wasn’t a provoked attack, that much is certain. Not unless one of the school’s bullies wanted to get even for her uncanny ability to trip them when they aren’t paying attention.

Could that be it? A schoolmate’s misguided revenge quest, taken too far? Maybe… if it was just Momo. If it wasn’t covered up as a suicide. There is premeditation in the act of child murder.

“Abarai-kun, you can have a cookie too, if you want,” he hears Momo say in the near distance. “There’s more than enough!”

Slowly, as if emerging from deep water, Renji lifts his head, sleepy eyes sullen to the light of the classroom and the passing glances of the girls sitting and gossiping nearby. From where he sits, Izuru can see the flecks of cherry visible in the cookies, bright red and dark red in tandem. Bright like Renji’s hair. Dark like dried blood.

He watches the flecks disappear as Renji picks up the cookie and eats it in two bites.

Momo tucks the cookies back away, and Izuru stares at the second he had retrieved. Why is he here? He knows why 1993; he knows why October. Why today? Why had his arrival point been October 4, as opposed to October 12? All he really knows about Revival is that it shoves him where he is most needed, and not a minute earlier.

“Abarai-kun,” he says. Renji’s face flashes through his mind, two days ago at the market. Renji the solitary. Renji, who leaves school early to go hang out with so-called delinquents. Renji, who as of now is staring at him, mouth still full of half-chewed cookie. “Do you want to join our club?”

* * *

Frenetic energy sends Izuru dancing through gym class with nervousness. The ongoing game of dodgeball is a mere backdrop for his own private drama, even when he narrowly avoids being smeared against the pavement by the opposing team. He never has been good at this game.

At the end of class, he wipes his face with a towel, puts on his school uniform once again, and meets Momo under the bleachers where she is waiting, wide-eyed and accusing.

“Why did you do that?” she asks right out, her tiny hands worrying against the edge of her shirt. She does not have to clarify what she means. “The other two aren’t gonna be happy! It’s their club.”

“Hisagi-senpai can tell us if we’re not accepting new members,” Izuru defends. He still doesn’t have an answer to Hinamori’s question, so he pretends that he didn’t hear it. “And if Ise-senpai wanted to vet new members, she should have become president of Literature Club.”

“That’s not the point. Hey, slow down!” Momo has to jog to keep up with Izuru. “Abarai-kun is… Look, I have no problem with him, but have you ever seen him pick up a book he didn’t have to? He’s not gonna have a good time!”

He has to admit, Momo has a point. Anyone can be a literature enthusiast, given the right book; as a writer, Izuru has to believe that. Even so, that’s something that takes time, and Renji doesn’t have time.

Still, the half-fledged point of this exercise isn’t to give Renji a love of reading. The point is to give Renji a group of friends.

Not just any friends. Friends his own age. Friends who care deeply, who will stick by Renji until the very end, who will make sure he gets home safe every time. Friends like the ones Izuru remembers having.

The door to their classroom swings open easily. Izuru can sense Momo standing on tip-toe behind him, looking over his shoulder, just as curious as him to see inside. Of course, Shuuhei is there in his usual spot. Of course, Ise Nanao is in the middle of highlighting a line in her study guide. And there, seated adjacent to the pushed-together island of desks at the front of the classroom, sits Renji, looking uncertain.

“Ah, Kira,” says Shuuhei, whose novel is set on the desk, not yet opened. “Hinamori-kun. I don’t suppose either of you has a spare book to read, do you?”

“Ahh…” Well. That is one extremely predictable issue that Izuru had, of course, not predicted. “I mean, I have my poetry book…”

“Oh! I just finished a volume,” Momo says, and she opens her backpack to reveal a handful of _Sailor Moon_ issues, freshly-purchased apart from the creased spines. “Take your pick! Ah, actually, you should start with…”

As Momo fishes out the first volume and Renji looks on with curious trepidation, Shuuhei sighs. “Well, if manga’s your thing, Hinamori is the expert.” Hinamori, who does not notice (or chooses to ignore) the insult, beams. “Like I said, you can bring anything you want to read. Kira does poetry. Ise-san here mostly studies these days, but like I said-”

“I can read this.” As Momo hands the manga across to Renji, he flips through the black-and-white pages, glances at the carefully-printed text. “I mean, yeah. But I think I can read it and like it.”

Hinamori zips shut her backpack again and makes for her usual chair. “Hooray! Have you ever read manga before, Abarai-kun?”

“A little. My friend has some of _Dragon Ball_ under his bed. It gets kinda stupid, though.”

“I tried that! I thought it was kind of boring. At first the twists were kind of interesting, but then they started getting repetitive…”

“You… really like manga, don’t you…” Renji looks like he’s been thrust onto a stage, blinded by spotlights. Izuru smiles in spite of himself at how out-of-his-depth he looks. Leave it to Hinamori to put aside misgivings and embrace the human in Renji’s scared skin.

“Well… not really. Mostly I just like _Sailor Moon_. But it’ll be nice to have someone to talk about it with! These jerks here just think it’s low-brow.” She sticks her tongue out at Shuuhei and Izuru, the latter of whom has the decency to wave his arms in surrender.

“She reads it in Literature Club to spite us,” Shuuhei cuts in. “But that’s not a bad thing. It means that technically we’re still two-for-one on the novel versus poetry debate.” He looks apologetically at Nanao, who absently pats a thick tome on her desk, as-yet untouched.

“Hmph! To me it looks like we’re two-for-one-for-one-for one on the manga versus poetry versus novels versus studying debate!” Momo’s lips twist into a mischievous grin, tickled by the competition.

As the two of them go back and forth about it, Izuru slips silently into his seat, slightly off-center from the rest of the group. He watches Nanao’s highlighter glide up and down the page, then replace itself with a different color. Renji’s fingers thread between pages before flipping to the beginning and dividing them.

He looks down at his own book of poetry, closed on his desk. It’s a facade, but it’s one that he can pull off right now. The only mask for his intentions right now. As the argument recedes into quiet companionship and Shuuhei and Momo recede into their respective books, Izuru flips to a random page and lets the words slide across his eyes.

* * *

_October 7, 1993_

_Karakura Town_

Every day counts. Every minute of every day counts. Each decision, every step taken -- anything could be the catalyst for change, or fate’s intervention, attempting to set things right. To stray from the path set by fate is to defy gravity.

It took a long time for Izuru to understand this. As he stands in the chilly dawn air, staring at the front of Shuuhei’s house, he recalls his first experiences with Revival. He was an adult, just barely. At first, it was just like déjà vu. The double experience of existence, five minutes repeated, as if he had dissociated and walked backwards in time.

The first step was the realization that he’d gone back at all. The second was doing something about it.

When it happened, when he knew it was happening, pure chance caught the circumstance and tossed it to him. When the child fell, he reached out and caught her. Then the two of them stood, frozen, as her backpack tumbled from around her shoulders and fell far down the riverbank until it burst upon the concrete. Even after she moved on, abandoning her scattered possessions to the mercy of the river, he stood there, staring at the place where her body would have laid.

He wasn’t a hero. He still isn’t. Revival is throwing your body sideways and knocking a trolley off its careening course. It requires no special skill — only enough presence of mind and weight of body to intervene.

Izuru looks up as the door to Shuuhei’s house opens, and Shuuhei himself steps out. His glasses reflect the purple and pink dawn as he walks down the path. Behind him, a silver-haired man squints after him, barefoot and shivering in his bathrobe. Shuuhei waves him back inside as he sidles alongside Izuru.

“How’s your dad?” Izuru asks, glancing back toward the house. Kensei is gone, replaced by the closed door. Still, his gaze lingers; he hasn’t seen him since he was… well, since his mother’s funeral. ‘Family is family,’ he’d said, even though Shuuhei hadn’t bothered to show up.

“Eh. Fine.” Shuuhei shunts his backpack further onto his shoulder and takes off his glasses, casing them and slipping them into the side pocket. “Mashiro came home last night.”

“Ah.” He looks back again at the house, this time at its side. Mashiro’s bedroom window, garbed with a colorful polka-dot curtain, is still closed; she’s never been much of a morning person. “So that means…”

“She’s gonna drag Dad around town to get everything she’s been needing in Shibuya, yeah.” Shuuhei huffs. “She dyed her hair pink, and Dad didn’t say anything! Next she’ll be getting a bunch of tattoos…”

“Did you want a tattoo, Hisagi-san?” Izuru half-smiles at the thought. Shuuhei isn’t exactly the most straight-laced person, nor is his father, so his annoyance with his sister reeks of jealousy.

“No, of course not! But…” Ah, there it is. The pout. Definitely jealous.

A moment of silence as they walk, the sun slowly rising to the east. Izuru winds himself up into memories, nostalgia tugging at the edge of his sleeves. He remembers many nights, nights of all seasons, seated at Muguruma Kensei’s table, next to Shuuhei, across from a teenage Mashiro (back when her hair was still its natural color, when she went to the same high school that Shuuhei will attend in less than year), his mother occasionally laughing alongside them at their hijinks or jokes.

_Family is family._

“So, Abarai-kun,” Shuuhei says, interrupting Izuru’s train of thought. “I see your little plan worked.”

“Huh? Oh, I guess.” _T hat’s a good one, Shuuhei. As if I have a plan and I’m not just going on instinct._ “He seemed to enjoy himself.”

“Didn’t he?” Shuuhei’s eyes turn on Izuru. Always analyzing, considering, inferring. Izuru shivers and pretends that the cold morning caused it. “Maybe he’ll even bring a book this time.”

“Maybe.”

Shuuhei huffs. Whatever he’s looking for, he isn’t receiving it, and that makes him impatient. “You’re so secretive lately. I can’t tell what’s gotten into you.” Izuru stops in his tracks, and he only continues moving forward when Shuuhei stops as well to stare back at him. “What’s going on? Really. Don’t bullshit me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It comes out colder than expected, colder and crueler. This time, Shuuhei is the one to stop, and Izuru walks past him, face clouded in shadow. Shuuhei is too smart, and too observant. He always has been. It’s this that got him into trouble when they were children, and it’s this quality that will drive the two of them apart.

So when he turns back to him, he smiles. He can feel his eyes crinkling at the corners as they shut out the world. He can’t make any mistakes, can’t clue Shuuhei into the truth. So he smiles. “Hisagi-san, it’s nothing, really. We’ve been friends for a long time, right? I’d tell you if something were going on.”

And he would. He would, were it not for the guillotine of death hanging over this town, waiting to destroy all of them. That’s what he tells himself, at least, to push down the bitter bubble of guilt in the pit of his stomach.

Shuuhei crosses his arms. That look is still in his eye, that stubborn look that tells Izuru he hasn’t heard the last of this. “If you say so.”

They continue on their way. Izuru eyes the pavement ahead of them, thinking about his next course of action. Shuuhei stares at the horizon but occasionally turns his gaze sideways when he thinks Izuru isn’t looking.

“Do you think,” Izuru starts as the school appears within eyeshot, “that your dad would have us over for dinner after Literature Club?”

A new idea has presented itself. Thinking about the evenings of joy, the nights returning home with full bellies and warm memories, it inspires him. He thinks of those happy memories and he thinks of Renji’s startled face when asked to come to Literature Club, the surprised-but-happy look on his face as he bid them farewell yesterday on the school grounds. Bringing Renji into the fold gave him a chance, one he’d never had before. It gave him insulation, and a built in set of friends.

But it isn’t enough. Momo is easy to win over, but Izuru needs Shuuhei’s buy-in. And Shuuhei is feeling insecure -- insecure about his standing, about their friendship, about Izuru’s strange behavior. Words won’t change that, not if Izuru’s actions don’t measure up. Gaining Shuuhei’s approval means reminding him that they’re still friends, and that adding Renji into the mix won’t change that.

“Dinner, huh?” Shuuhei crosses his arms again, but this time the gesture reminisces of a hug. It’s a matter of comfort, just like the small crease of a smile, quickly hidden. “Just the two of us, or should we invite the whole club?”

“Uhh…” Izuru blinks. The whole club? “Are… you sure? That’s a lot of people for your dad to feed.”

“Don’t worry about it.” The two of them cross into the courtyard, Shuuhei shrugging his backpack higher onto his shoulder. “You know my dad loves to cook. He’ll be thrilled. You’ll see.”

* * *

The look on Muguruma Kensei’s face, to say the least, does not seem thrilled. If Izuru had to put a name to it, the scrunched eyebrows and tightening at the edges of his mouth, it would be kind to call it exasperation. Still, he opens the door wide enough for all four of them to file in and kick off their shoes in the entryway.

“You didn’t tell me we were having guests,” he says in passing as Shuuhei shuts the door behind them. Izuru turns to watch Shuuhei’s face twist apologetically as he offers a half-smile to his father.

 _Ah, drat. I got him into this; I’d better take responsibility_. “I’m sorry, Muguruma-san!” Izuru spouts out. Behind him, Momo is excitedly pointing out the changes in decor since the last time she’d been over, while Renji ‘oh’s and ‘ah’s with each revelation. “It was my idea to have dinner. I thought everyone might appreciate a good meal after Literature Club. We’ll help do the dishes!”

Kensei’s scrutiny turns on Izuru, who feels himself shrink under that gaze. He’s an intimidating man, in spite of the years Izuru hides within his skin. Though not particularly tall, his physique displays his years of construction work, as well as his talent for cooking. An attractive man, though Izuru had been too nervous to joke about such things with Shuuhei in the past and certainly could not afford to do so now.

 _It still makes no sense that he’s single_ , he grouses as Kensei grunts his acknowledgement and gestures for the two boys to enter the main room. Intimidating or not, Muguruma Kensei indulges his children and their friends as if it is his full-time job.

“I wish Ise-senpai were here too,” Momo complains as she sinks onto the cushions in the living room. Renji sits next to her and glances around at the pine beams in the ceiling, as well as at the modern textiles and scrolls hung on the walls. “Oh! I recognize that artist.”

“Are you suuuuure?” lilts a voice from the hallway. Within seconds, Mashiro is upon them like a tempest in summer, scattering a deck of cards off the table’s surface and leaning over the remains. “I don’t think that you dooooo!”

“Mashiro brought it home from school,” Shuuhei says, approaching the table and taking his own seat near Renji. “It was your final, right?”

“Yup!” She gets up as quickly as she’d sat, trotting over to the kakejiku, which depicts a polka-dotted tiger stalking a stag through the urban jungle of Tokyo. “See? My signature!”

Kensei reappears, having tidied the entryway to his satisfaction. “Mashiro,” he says. “Come help me get the dumplings ready.”

Renji starts to get up, only for Kensei to hold out a hand, prompting him to sit again. “Guests eat first,” he says, then smiles slightly. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance to help out.”

“Yes, sir!” Renji offers what Izuru guesses is the facsimile of a salute, causing both Momo and Shuuhei to give him strange looks. Once Kensei is out of the room, he deflates. “Hisagi-senpai, your dad is scary!”

“He really seems that way, right?” Momo giggles and grabs a candy from the bowl in the center of the table. “He’s a real softy, though! No wonder they let him adopt two kids.”

“Wait, you’re adopted?!”

Shuuhei sighs, leaning back against the couch cushions that intersect with the dining area. “Yeah, don’t let my well-mannered demeanor fool you. Dad adopted me when I was a toddler, and Mashiro when she was almost 12.”

Anticipating an adverse reaction to Shuuhei’s sarcastic remark, Izuru starts to lean forward, but Renji only looks shocked and then laughs. “From the Karakura Children’s House?” he asks, referencing the orphanage. “You must not remember anything about it, then.”

“No,” Shuuhei says slowly, “not really.”

“Not that… it’s a bad thing! I mean…” Renji rubs the back of his head, knocking his ponytail askew as he tries to clarify. “I live there now! I was just thinking it’s really weird that you came from there too!”

A voice from the other room interrupts them. “Kira-kuuuun!” Mashiro’s face peers around the doorframe. “You’ve been conscripted! Come help carry things!”

“R-right! Coming!” He scrambles to his feet and hurries toward the kitchen. As he rounds the corner, he hears Shuuhei ask Renji something, but before he can wonder about it, Mashiro shoves a platter of dumplings into his hands. He very nearly drops it. “Mashiro, that’s hot!”

“Oh, is it? Sorry!” She takes it back, sets it down, and scrambles about to find a dish towel for him. “Forgot you had baby hands!”

Izuru scowls at her, then at his hands -- which are, in fairness, pretty small at this age -- as Kensei pops back in from the pantry, holding a jug of lychee juice. “Mashiro! Watch it.” He grunts at Izuru. “Once you take that out, come back and carry some cups. I don’t have enough cans of soda for you all.”

With the dumplings, noodles, drinks and treats laid out, Kensei finally takes his seat at the head of the table, Shuuhei and Renji stop talking, and the chorus of, “Let’s eat!” resounds in the cozy, cramped living space of the Muguruma house.

The dregs of dinner sit sleepily with them as they finish off the last of their meals. Whatever he might claim, Kensei always cooks like he’s expecting company, and everything always gets eaten.

Mashiro’s belch breaks the silence, and Kensei’s exclamation of, “Manners!” dissolves it into chattering laughter from the rest of them. They compliment the food. They horse around a bit, the deck of cards returned to its place of honor, until Kensei checks the time and tells them that it’s late.

Izuru is the first up, ready to make the offer, until Kensei shoos him toward the front door and says, “Don’t worry about it, kid. I’ll drive them home. See you soon.”

Izuru stands for a few moments outside the house, watching the beat-up pick-up truck round the corner from the driveway, its headlines dimly igniting the twilight on its way to the river. To the suspension bridge that crosses to the north end of Karakura Town, where Renji lives.

The smile from his farewells slides off his face. With only the stars and moon as his witness, he takes a look around the neighborhood. The sky is darker now than it was the night Renji died, but not by much. Kensei and Shuuhei will make sure he gets home safe, but just for tonight. What about tomorrow night? What about all the nights after?

When he closes his own front door behind him, he makes sure it is locked tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I've been working two jobs and only really get a chance to work on this during my lunch breaks.
> 
> Chapter 5 is in-progress, but depending on how much I manage to write this month, it may end up overlapping with NaNoWriMo, so we shall see. Either way, thanks for supporting with Kudos and comments!


	5. [CHAPTER 5]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Izuru realizes more and more that he doesn't know what he is doing. Renji proves unexpectedly open to alliance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience! I am ecstatic to present the next chapter, as well as my optimism that maybe I'll be able to finish this story this year! Maybe? Possibly? 
> 
> Well. At least I'd like to make a solid dent in it. And this is the first step in doing so. Enjoy!

_October 9, 1993_

_Karakura Town_

The air escapes his lungs in a rush, admitting a flood of river water. It tastes like brined salmon in the brief moment before he swallows it. He flounders, coughing uselessly against the water. His limbs pull at nothing, and he sinks.

Yet, he can see beyond the blackness of the murky deep. A red ribbon, just out of reach, sinking even faster and trailing up. Is that Renji? He kicks, not up but down. The urgency and hopelessness clash in Izuru’s mind as he tries to move, as feeble as if through molasses.

But down he goes. Even if he makes it, he’s not sure what exactly he can do, or how he could possibly lift even his own weight out of the depths.

Distantly, echoing in the deep corners of his mind, he can hear laughter. Rangiku’s laughter. _Don’t worry about me, okay? You worry too much._ He’d never worried enough, not about anyone but himself.

How selfish is he. He didn’t see the signs of the danger she was in until it was far too late.

These thoughts send him sinking toward the bottom. That’s all it took, huh? The self-pity and hopelessness chain him to the bottom as surely as an anchor.

He can reach now. He just has to extend his hand.

But as he grips the handful of hair and tugs upwards, he sees not Abarai Renji, but the unconscious face of Inoue Orihime.

—Sweating and shaking, Kira Izuru wakes in his bedroom to dawn and the concerned expression of his mother.

His breathing steadies. _A dream_. “What time is it?” he asks, ignoring for a moment the urgency of his racing heart.

Shizuka brushes his bangs out of his eyes, smearing a bead of sweat on his forehead as she smiles at him. “Early,” she says, flattening her hands over the ruffled sheets. “You were making noise, so I came to check on you.”

“Ah,” he says, and he worries.

Nonetheless, beyond waking him out of his nightmare, Shizuka seems unbothered by anything he might have said in his sleep. She stands up, straightens one of the action figures on his shelf. “I’ll make breakfast,” she says, and Izuru lets her go, because he still feels his elevated heart rate, his asthmatic breath filling his chest haphazardly, and the only cure is a moment to collect himself.

When he feels ready, he pads out to the kitchen, still wearing his pajamas and the ruffled hair of the night’s restlessness. Breakfast greets him with the warm scent caressing his cheek as he crosses the threshold. His mother smiles at him from the stove, a skillet with eggs sizzling and crackling merrily in hand. Her hair, pulled out of her face but still unruly by nature, catches in her mouth as she tries again to sweep it out of the way. “Will you set the table, Izuru?”

And he, in turn, smiles back. “Yes!”

Kira Shizuka’s hands, calloused and dry as the paper she cares for each day, clutch the outer edges of the serving dish as she carries it to the table. Eggs, loosely scrambled then fried, steam as she sprinkles them with salt and pepper, then adds the chives and sets the dish of soy sauce nearby. Izuru eagerly serves himself several scoops of the dish, then waits for his mother to do the same before taking the first bite.

“Is it good?” Shizuka eats small bites, clutched delicately between the tips of her chopsticks.

“It’s good,” Izuru says, and continues eating.

Moments pass in silence, with only the soft clinking of dish, utensil, and drinking glass to build the ambiance of the room. Izuru tries to remember a time in his recent past where he’s had such a quiet, restful moment to himself; he cannot. The sounds of the city leak through his apartment walls, and hurried breaktime meals battle against the ever-growing mound of dishes to be washed. Here, there are only him and his mother, the meal between them, and the soft chirping of autumn birds beyond the kitchen window.

“Izuru,” says his mother as they both set down their chopsticks, “I have the day off today.”

“Oh,” he says.

“And I was thinking, we should do something nice. A picnic, maybe? When was the last time we went on a picnic?”

“It’s been too long,” Izuru agrees, and his mother has no idea just how long.

“You’ve just, just been so busy, and I’ve been so busy, and…” And suddenly she is tearing up slightly, much to Izuru’s horror. “You’ve gotten so serious all of a sudden, and I want you to know that I’m always here for you if you need anything, okay?”

Izuru tries to speak, but seeing his mother, seated across from him and baring her soul like this, is simply too much—far too much. Before he can so much as blink away his own tears, she reaches around the table and pulls him over into an awkward hug that leaves him sprawling across the rug.

“Don’t grow up too fast, Izuru. Let me be your mother for just a little longer.”

Izuru can do nothing more than nod.

* * *

It baffles him. It boggles his mind, the idea that he could so easily spend this precious time accompanying his mother on a picnic.

Why did he agree? It’s easy enough to tell himself that, in the midst of trying to orchestrate the end of a conspiracy, he needs to adopt the guise of normality as much as possible, to convince his mother and his friends and everyone else that he’s still himself.

Would his thirteen-year-old self have jumped on the chance to go on a picnic with his mom? Undoubtedly. Always working, always bus y, always remorseful for her absence, Kira Shizuka was not made for the working single mother life, and it probably was the death of her in the end. Izuru would have given almost anything to see her more often as a child. And as an adult, he understands more than ever just how finite these moments are.

That’s it, really. He wants to spend just a few hours more with his mother. That’s all.

Together they pack onigiri into woven containers, neatly separated with clean dish towels to keep them from sticking together. The afternoon is still warm enough to dress lightly, though Shizuka does set aside her wide-brimmed sun hat for a cotton scarf. With the fabric looped around her long hair, skirt draping around her calves and ankles, she disguises her world-weariness behind anticipation.

Izuru, too, makes a point of considering his attire. Not that he has much to choose from in the first place — mostly school uniforms, though he manages to fish a pair of slacks out of the back of his closet.

It isn’t until he’s fully dressed, jacket tucked over his shoulders, that he remembers these are the slacks he wore — will wear — to Renji’s and Momo’s funerals.

“Are you ready?” his mother asks as he reappears, still wearing the pants but looking slightly paler for the slap in the face of a realization. “Are you okay? You look like-”

“—I’ve seen a ghost, yeah,” he says, then immediately regrets it. “No, I just remembered I have an assignment to do.”

“Oh,” says Shizuka, and to her credit she manages not to look too disappointed. “That’s okay! We can do this another day.”

“No,” Izuru says, taking a breath and reminding himself that he is supposed to be thirteen. “I can get it done tomorrow. Let’s enjoy this time.”

The weather is nice, the gentle breeze leaving a litter of leaves on the ground as they make their way along the sidewalks toward the river.

If not for the heavy heart in his chest, Izuru might have been able to fully surrender for the moment. His mother by his side, their food tucked carefully into the basket, the evening balms the soul. Shizuka’s face, serene, reflects this -- she will cherish this moment with her son. Just as Izuru shuts his eyes tight and tries to ingrain this afternoon in his soul.

The only etchings written on the heart are memories, he reflects, then wishes he had something to write that down.

They aren’t the only family embracing the evening. Farther along the path, a young family, toddler clinging to his own mother’s skirts as she pushes a double-wide stroller, also makes its way toward the river. In spite of himself, Izuru feels the anticipation stir in his heart. The river itself is not desolated, and even the bridge is a neutral scene, made ominous only by events yet to pass. As much grief as it has brought him, the river is also a source of life, of joy. Of reading under trees and running through the grass playing superhero games.

“Sit down, Izuru,” says his mother, and he obediently does so, letting the balm of melancholy wash over him and down the bank.

Not quite hungry, he helps his mother unpack their feast and settles to people-watch. The knoll where they’ve spread their blanket, sure enough, is hardly devoid of life. Nearby, two young boys run back and forth, trying to get their toy kites aloft. Further down the slope, a pair of teenagers sits side by side, conspicuously not allowing their shoulders to touch as they watch the river’s flow.

It makes sense, he supposes. Karakura Town is hardly known for its attractions; in lieu of a theme park or a public beach, the townsfolk will accept the entertainment of nice weather and a pleasant riverside view in its stead. Those not satisfied with such things learn to make do or leave.

Of course, even an evening such as this holds its surprises like a winning hand of cards and laughs. Because there, sitting down the bank on one of the concrete piers at water’s edge, is a familiar shock of red hair, and the boy attached.

Izuru sits upright, squinting at the sight to be sure. Yes, Abarai Renji is there, next to two other boys. _His friends, from the Karakura House,_ Izuru guesses, and though he never learned their names, he recognizes their mannerisms, even from so far away — the one with his shaved head and fierce gesticulations; the one with longer hair, preened looks and perched stance atop the nearest railing.

Izuru’s heart floats and sinks at once. Maybe it is Fate that brought him here today. Another opportunity, a chance to make a difference.

But getting involved means an encounter with those two as well.

“Izuru? Is everything alright?”

He’d forgotten again — where he is, who he’s with. He looks at his mother with a placid smile, or as carefree an expression as he can manage, at least. “Of course. I just saw one of my classmates, that’s all.”

If trepidation unveils itself in Izuru’s countenance, Shizuka doesn’t notice, or pretends not to. “Oh, I see! Where are they? You should introduce me!” She begins craning her neck to see over the sea of picnic-goers.

Crap. “I don’t… that might not be a good idea…” That pair of teenagers — it isn’t just that they send a pit of nervous energy spiraling in Izuru’s gut. If they’re close with Renji, chances are they might not take kindly to Izuru butting into their free time with his mother.

He catastrophizes quickly. Worst case scenario? Renji never talks to Izuru again, too hurt from this flaunting of his family, and dies, alone as ever. He shakes his head like a dog shaking water from its fur. Normally finding the worst possible result helps him realize that the situation isn’t all that dire. In this case, the stakes are higher than anyone else could possibly imagine.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Izuru doesn’t have a chance to act in any sense, because at that moment, the bald teenager points across the bank, and Renji starts waving in his direction.

So much for that, he thinks, heart sinking, and tries to collect himself in the time it takes for the three boys to wander their way over to the Kira family picnic blanket.

"Kira! You're here," is Renji’s opening line, which makes Izuru smile in spite of himself at the blunt obviousness of it. Renji smiles brightly, then seems to notice Izuru’s mother for the first time. He gives a surprised little bow that looks more like a spasm. “Kira’s mother. Nice to meet you!”

“Easy, Renji.” The teenagers are not far behind him, hounding across the field in his wake. The bald one slaps a hand on Renji’s shoulder and continues, “You’re gonna pull a muscle, actin’ like that.”

“I thought it was sweet,” the preened one says, and tosses his hair over his shoulder. Since it’s just barely longer than that, it brushes back briefly and then falls forward again. “Like a real little gentleman.”

“Shut up!” Renji pouts, hands balled into little fists, before remembering himself again. “I-I mean, you’re embarrassing me!”

 _Good on Renji for holding his line_ , Izuru thinks, before realizing that the willful gaze of the bald one is trained now on him. “What’d you say his name was?”

“K-kira Izuru!” He does not have to falsify the tremor in his voice, nor the wild glance around for divine intervention. None comes.

“See, Ikkaku? A perfectly normal name.” The slimmer one leans in conspiratorially and adds, “It’s good to meet you, Kira-kun! We’ve been calling you Ghost Eyes since that one time.”

Before Izuru can even begin to formulate a response to that, Renji pipes up again. “Yumichika! You can’t tell him that…”

As the three of them go at it, voiding any need for Izuru to speak up and contribute to the conversation, he glances over at his mother. The picture of serenity, her mischievous nature and quick humor has no bearing on her countenance. Rather, she gazes softly at the arguing teenagers, before saying to Izuru, softly so as to not interrupt:

“I’m glad you have such good friends, Izuru.”

* * *

_October 10, 1993_

_Karakura Town_

The next day, Izuru stares up at the stone sign, embossed by hand with the words, ‘Karakura Home’.

As the sun set the previous night, Renji got up to leave, just as the fireflies began to leap overhead. “Hey, you should visit tomorrow,” he’d said. And, like most things said in the glittering echo of street lamps flickering to life, it seems to be said in the spirit of farewells, with no actual intent behind it. Like ‘let’s get together soon’ followed by years of silence.

But Renji is more sincere than that. He has to be; Izuru is relying on it.

So here he is. Backpack slung over his shoulder, knit sweater pulled tight around his chest, staring at the sign. He should be happy, he thinks numbly. This should be a sign that he’s making progress, that he’s getting somewhere with Renji. Instead, all that grips him is apprehension.

He approaches the yard. The building itself is oddly… school-shaped, he assesses, with its fenced-in outdoor area and its three stories of long, window-lined corridors. At this time of day, younger children play on a nearby playscape — nothing elaborate, just a seesaw and some monkey bars, but the sight still makes him smile. Hard as existence must be here, there are still little joys.

As he opens the doors at the front of the building, two boys of about 7 or 8 rush out, nearly knocking him over in their wake. Immediately, a voice inside calls out after them, “Touya! Hibiki! Watch where you’re going,” followed by the kind of refined grumbling that comes from an adult whose rules have been broken. Stepping around the space where the boys had passed, Izuru lets the door shut behind him as he moves into the entryway of the Karakura Home.

The space is clean and smells faintly of disinfectant. He spots a patch of wet linoleum nearby, paired with a trifold sign warning passers-by to mind their step. Sounds of children echo through the hallways, the nexus of which is in this small entryway — concrete and glass, windows and wood doors, and a humble, semi-circular desk in the center.

And behind the desk, a man. Izuru knows that he has never met this man before, because he would remember. He has dark skin, darker than most Japanese people, and Izuru concludes that he must be mixed-race. But it is not his skin that forms the focal point of Izuru’s attention — it is his milky, translucent irises, so pale that they seem to almost see right through him. This, in spite of seeing nothing at all.

“Did you need something?” The man speaks to him — it must be him, since there’s no one else in the vicinity. “Or, are you the one who spilled the juice earlier? You know the rules — you must always clean up after yourself.”

The admonishment instills a sense of deep shame in Izuru, who has to take a moment to remember that no, he’s done nothing wrong and did not spill the juice. “N-no, I’m actually looking for someone! I don’t… I don’t live here.”

The man’s eyebrows rise to meet the curling edges of his locks. “Oh? My apologies. I’m the guardian here — Tousen Kaname. You may call me Tousen-sensei. And what is your name?”

“Kira Izuru. I’m here to visit a friend.”

“As you said.” Tousen stands and moves around the desk. Though walking, it is as though his feet barely make contact with the ground, so deliberate are his footsteps. He deftly avoids the sticky mess of purple juice on the floor as moves toward Izuru, and his hand moves to place a clipboard horizontally on the countertop. “Go ahead and sign in. Then I will help you find your friend…”

It takes Izuru a second to realize that Tousen’s polite pause is intended to allow him to indicate who he is actually here to see. “I’m here to see Abarai Renji.”

“Abarai-kun?” To his credit, Tousen’s eyebrows only briefly indicate his surprise before moving back down to meet with his eyelids. “Very well. I’ll help you find him.”

The Karakura Home is larger than it had appeared from the outside. Having filled out the line on Tousen’s log, Izuru follows him down one of the many long hallways. Tousen is a quiet fellow, it seems; he does not make small talk and does not inquire about Izuru’s sudden appearance at the orphanage.

As they pass each room, Izuru takes time to peer inside every open door and window. Sure enough, most appear empty; the day is bright, sunny and relatively warm, so the dormitory-style rooms, seemingly too small for the number of beds in each, but quite tidy, seem to have been abandoned for the tracts of grass that run along the sides of the building.

He also gathers that, apart from the main offices and a large room that appears to be a cafeteria, the first floor of the Karakura Home mostly holds bedding for the younger children. Instead of stopping at any of these long rooms, Tousen instead leads Izuru to the end of the hallway, where a wide staircase trails into the second story.

“Isn’t it, er, inconvenient to have the stairs all the way back here?” Izuru looks past the stairs and notes that the other long hallway, the one that they hadn’t taken to the back of the orphanage, also winds past the stairs.

Tousen ignores Izuru’s rude boldness. “The upper level wasn’t built until more recently. This was the only place the stairs could be built, or so I’ve heard.”

So up they go.

Izuru fights down the urge to make more small talk with Tousen, who seems intent on his destination, looking forward with all but his eyes. Izuru keeps glancing back at him, trying to make sure he doesn’t stumble, but the concern is unwarranted. If anything, Tousen seems more balanced on his feet than Izuru himself, whose inattention nearly causes him to run into a support pillar as they round a corner. Tousen seems unperturbed, and they keep going.

“Abarai-kun.”

Izuru has to stop in his tracks, so abruptly does Tousen halt. He darts back to the room where Tousen has paused — lo and behold, there sits Renji, a set of massive headphones tucked around his ears, hair not yet bunched into a ponytail and allowed to hang down around his shoulders. Tousen continues speaking at the very moment when Renji looks up from his reverie. “Your friend is here.”

“Th-thank you, Tousen-sensei!” Renji is scrambling, tossing the headphones and cassette player onto the bed and getting to his feet.

“Do keep in mind, Abarai-kun, that you are to inform me of expected visitors when possible.”

He turns a bit red around the cheeks. “Understood!”

Tousen, seeming satisfied by this response, nods at Izuru before heading back down the hallway — back towards the stairs. Renji emerges from his room just long enough to grab Izuru by the elbow and tug him into the dorm room.

“You came! I can’t believe you really came.” Izuru stands just beyond the threshold of the closed door, watching Renji dart back and forth, tossing stray socks into a hamper and stray papers into a book, which is flung, shut, into a desk drawer. He takes a brief moment to wad his hair up and pull it into a messy bun.

Izuru nods. “Well, you invited me, so…”

“You shoulda snuck in, though! Then you wouldn’t have had to sign in an’ all that garbage.”

“How could I have snuck in? I had no idea where your room is.”

“...true.” Seeming satisfied with the response, Renji flops back down on the ground, and leaving his cassette player where it lays, twists and turns to dig under the bed until he finds his quarry: a deck of playing cards, battered and mismatched. “Let’s play.”

The card game Renji attempts to teach Izuru is somewhat like a watered-down version of Blackjack. He deals each of them three cards, and then watches Izuru as he looks over his hand. “You gonna play or what?”

“What’s… what’s the goal?”

“Play your best card!”

“Best as in…”

“Highest!” And with that, Renji intently tosses a 10 of Diamonds onto the linoleum between them. “Beat that!”

Izuru glances back to his own hand. So, basically a game of chance, though he can’t tell Renji as much. He has a Queen of Spades, but both of his other cards are 8s, and he has to remember that he’s not here for games, not really. So an 8 of Clubs ends up on the floor, and Renji pumps his fists into the air triumphantly.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” he says enthusiastically, shuffling the hands back into the deck without an ounce of suspicion in his intent. Izuru nods along and takes the opportunity to glance around the room, fully, finally.

Unlike the long lines of bunkbeds he’d seen downstairs, this room contains just the four beds, lining the sides of the room and framing a small window. A single desk occupies the floor space under the window; atop it, an assortment of clutter prevents anyone from actually using it. Each of the four beds, in spite of its simplicity, is distinct. Renji’s bed (he assumes it belongs to Renji, seeing as they are leaning against it) has an old, oversized sweatshirt tossed onto it, some beat-up band posters taped to the wall above it, and some old shoe boxes underneath it.

“Who are your roommates?” Izuru asks, his curiosity getting the better of him.

Renji grunts. “Some guys. You wouldn’t know them; they mostly go to the high school.” He licks his lips before adding, “But Ikkaku sleeps over there.”

Izuru whirls to see the bed in question. Positioned diagonally from Renji’s, it seems almost scrupulously clean in comparison. Well-made, with no clutter poking out from underneath.

No, not scrupulously clean. Almost… empty. As though Ikkaku didn’t want to leave anything out for anyone to look at.

Renji almost seems to know what Izuru is thinking. “No one really steals things around here. Or at least, not in our room. ‘kakku just likes to keep his stuff on him, in case he needs it.”

Izuru takes a long moment to look at that bed, and at the other two empty beds, and at the window itself, unadorned and smudged from the outside. Renji is spending a beautiful Sunday afternoon sitting inside, listening to music by himself. Renji, who hadn’t expected him to come, would’ve spent the entire day indoors, in his room, very possibly.

Izuru stands up. Renji stares at him in surprise, still holding a half-shuffled deck of cards.

He paces nonchalantly to the window, trying to think. One week. He has one week to make a difference, enough of a difference to save a life here. To change a life.

“What else is there to do around here?” he asks. In the strip of bare earth below, a group of boys play football. The sounds of their shouts echo against the face of the building, emphasizing the silence. “You can’t spend all your time playing cards. Can you?”

“‘course not,” Renji replies, scoffing. Now he puts down the cards, letting them splay across the box they’ve used as their table. The Three of Hearts skids across the table, and Renji’s hand darts out to catch it before it falls onto Izuru’s lap. “Come on, then. I’ll show you how to have fun in a place like this.”

* * *

Renji’s tour of the Karakura Home takes a much different turn than Tousen’s silent procession through the hallways. As he leads on down the hallway, Renji makes a point of explaining everything as they pass.

“…and that’s where Yumichika sleeps! Looks empty now, huh. Ikkaku and Yumichika must be off somewhere. They do pretty much everything together.” Izuru stares into the bedroom that Renji had pointed out. Nearly identical in shape and size, with the decor surrounding each bed the only indication that they’re looking at a different room at all.

But what an indicator it is. In the case of Yumichika’s bed, a canvas painting of a butterfly, florid and abstract in its colorations, takes up nearly half of the wall; a square mirror forms the other half.

“Is Ayasegawa-san an artist?” Izuru asks, captivated by the painting.

Renji shrugs. “I’unno, that’s the only art I’ve ever seen him with.” Seemingly uninterested in the talent of his friend, he turns away, instead focusing on the hallway ahead. “Water fountain’s down there, if you ever need any water.”

What an odd world to live in, where Renji’s two closest friends (or senpais?) could be the most talented teenagers living here… and it would mean nothing to him. If their statements are to be believed, neither Ikkaku nor Yumichika attend school, leaving them bumming around town like a pair of delinquents all day. And yet, neither their reputations nor their talents are what define Renji’s relationship to them — only, how they treat him in relation to themselves. As an equal. As a friend.

It hits Izuru, absently watching Renji fiddle with the knob to a locked door, that he’s doing this wrong. That he’s going about this in the wrong way, in spite of his early successes. Renji doesn’t need pity. He doesn’t want it. Not for being alive, anyway. Living here is just one aspect of his life, one that colors all judgments before they ought to be made.

The locked door swings open, and Renji holds it wide, smiling as he gestures for Izuru to head up a set of stairs. Izuru, smiling back, ascends.

No, pity is not what is needed here. Companionship, true friendship, is the only thing that will help keep Renji alive. It was the only thing that ever could.

The roof is chilly, even in the mid-afternoon sun. Closing the door behind them, Renji follows Izuru up with a confidence that suggests that this space is less off-limits to him than it probably ought to be. Him and most of the others, based on the signs of inhabitation. Nearby, two aluminum cans moulder, empty and crushed in the corner. Spray-painted graffiti decorates the walls of an electrical closet, spelling out the names of those who had come before. Izuru pulls his sweater a little tighter over his shoulders as he examines the work, searching for familiar names.

Renji joins him. “Are ya cold?” he asks, focusing more on Izuru’s arms pulled tight at the neck. “We don’t have to stay up here. It’s just a spot I like to come to think.”

“I’m fine,” Izuru says, willing his teeth not to audibly chatter as he talks. “Is your name here?”

Renji shakes his head. “They cracked down on spray paint and most other stuff years ago.” He smiles and adds, “That’s part of why Ikkaku keeps his stuff on him, of course. Don’t want anyone to go snooping.”

Izuru nods. Looks around some more; takes it all in. He even walks to the edge and looks over the side, peers at the stone walkway below. They’re only three stories off the ground at best. Around 10 meters, assuming he’s got the math right. If Renji had fallen off the roof, rather than the bridge, he probably would have survived.

“Awfully high up here,” he comments, hoping his nonchalance will disguise the query behind the observation.

“Heh, yeah,” says Renji, joining Izuru at the edge. They can see the bare hint of twilight beginning to form, just the tinge of orange on the horizon as the sun slowly sinks. “I try not to think about it too much. That landing wouldn’t be pleasant.”

Izuru frowns. Is it helpful to recall that Renji hadn’t jumped but was almost certainly pushed? Whoever had done so hadn’t shoved him off the roof — they’d picked the bridge. They’d wanted to kill him. There was intent there. Premeditation, and preparation. The facet of that seems almost more malicious than the act itself.

The possibility remains, of course, that it was an accident, that Renji slipped. But that does nothing to explain Momo’s death, so soon following.

Renji is staring at him. Watching him, eyes twisting into some expression of an emotion Izuru decides is concern. Concern for him. “Somethin’ on your mind?” he asks, mirroring Izuru’s stance against the concrete ledge. Arms crossed, back bowed, the two of them stand there for a long moment, looking down at the ground.

“Not really,” Izuru finally says. He turns away from the view and looks back toward the place in the center of the roof where the stairs lead back down. Carefully, he traces the words before he says them. “It seems like, well, your home here is nice. Living in a place like this, with everyone you’ve known your whole life… it seems like the perfect life, in a way.”

The lie lingers on his lips, and he does not make eye contact. He stares off into the middle distance and waits for a reaction.

He needs to know. To confirm that they were wrong, when they said that Renji killed himself.

The seconds’ pause lasts hours in Izuru’s head as he pretends to stare into the distance, to watch the children play below. Anything but waiting on the edge of a razor for the words that come next: “Yeah, I guess. Not perfect, of course. That’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

Izuru releases the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He understands that’s not a sure thing, but it doesn’t need to be. It just complicates things, to know that he’s protecting Renji from someone else who wanted to do him harm. And makes them much simpler. “Oh, yeah? What’s wrong with it, then?”

The words automatically come as a challenge, which suits him nicely. He emphasizes the query with a guess at a lopsided grin.

A grin which Renji does not return. Instead he frowns even more deeply, fingers drumming against the concrete edge as they gaze downward at the evening comings and goings of children, too lonely and too bored to keep confined to the grounds. Izuru hasn’t seen a caretaker other than Tousen to help facilitate such a thing, either.

“’s complicated,” he finally says, voice cracking the slightest bit as he pouts there. “It’s like school, y’know? Like having a hundred siblings.” And he makes a face. “And you know how well siblings get along.”

He doesn’t, really. Izuru is an only child, a lonely child. The closest thing he’s ever had to a sibling is… well. Rangiku. He looks down. That’s not to say they never fought, but it’s different with a family of your own choosing. It’s different when you’re fighting for them just as much as against.

Renji keeps talking, oblivious to Izuru’s contemplations. “It’s nothing, though. Not a big deal at all.”

He doesn’t stay much longer after that. Dinner will be soon, and his mother will worry.

As Izuru gathers his things to leave, he glances back at the dorm room where Renji sits, now turning on his music so that it softly resonates out into the hallway. He doesn’t recognize the band, though the harsh metallic and bass sounds aren’t really his style either way. He wonders where Renji got the cassette tape, then decides that it’s not really his business. It’s not what’s important here, anyway.

What’s important is that he sees the path he walks. And he sees what he thinks is the end of the road. One way or another.

* * *

But that’s not the end of it.

The purple twilight embraces Izuru as he breaks away from the Karakura Home and emerges into open air. It’s quieter than inside, if only by a bit. The chattering sea of children in line for the dinner mess had hardly been willing to allow him past, fearing his theft of their places in the queue. Finally, though, he’d simply pushed past, ignoring their protests, until they realized he wasn’t cutting in line and ignored him again.

So yes, the lively cicada calls in the autumn evening, the persistent stalking of a grey cat along a fence, the slowly accumulating chill at the tips of his fingers — all these make for a pleasant sort of peace, a familiarity. He anticipates the calm of the walk home even as he begins the cross-town trek.

So caught in the dregs of the day is he, that he almost doesn’t notice his companion.

As he passes through the gates of the school, he sees from the corner of his eye a figure, slinking along the exterior wall, approaching him. And he turns, and— It’s Rangiku. It’s Rangiku, she’s there in front of him, and he holds his breath for a second as he takes her in, this teenage phantom before him.

She’s skinny in the way that an alleycat is skinny — not for lack of trying. Her hair flutters around her earlobes, striking bleached gold in the fading sunlight, and Izuru can see a dash of lipstick smeared on her lips. Her school uniform, the cuffs of her pants rolled to mid-calf, seems to leave her open for the chill, yet she doffs her cigarette from her lips nonchalantly as she turns fully toward him.

 _I had forgotten you smoked_ , he thinks to himself, fondly even as his lungs ache.

Noticing his eyes flicker to the cigarette, she laughs, then presses the tip to the stone wall, smearing and smudging until it extinguishes itself.

Then she says, “Kira. You haven’t been avoiding me. Have you?”

It takes a moment for Izuru to comprehend her words, let alone think of a suitable response. By the time he opens his mouth to reply, she is shaking her head. “Never mind, then. You’re a busy kid. So what’re you doing here, anyway?”

“Visiting a friend,” he manages. He cannot stop staring at Rangiku, at the subtle smirk in even the way she frowns at him. It’s uncanny. At 17, she wears only the barest touch of eyeliner, the smallest hint of mascara. At 29, she will adorn herself with the brightest hues, the most vibrant shades. To him, though, she stands out just the same. “I didn’t know you lived here.”

Her smile is strained within her answer. “Well, you caught me. Only for another year, though.” She winks now, tucking the half-finished cigarette into her uniform’s breast pocket, and leans in. “Did’ya know that I don’t really have a birthday? They just put down the day that I was brought here! No birth certificate or nothing.”

“And your last name is the same as the street where you were found. Yeah, I know.”

Izuru is halfway through rolling his eyes before he freezes. It is not, indeed, this Rangiku that has told him this story before. It will be an older Rangiku — age 22, comforting him fresh off his own orphaning; age 25 and piss-drunk after losing her first half-serious job. _“I come from nothing. Nothing, you hear me?”_ she’ll say, and she’ll be right.

But for now, confusion lurks in the mist behind those eyes, hazel in the lunar sky. “And how,” she says, “do you know that?”

Well. He’s put his foot in it a bit now. “You told me,” he says. Trying to sound convincing. Trying to convince himself that it’s enough of the truth to avoid the guilt of it. “Sorry, Matsumoto-san. We should catch up another time.” He smiles wryly; he has to get out of this conversation as soon as possible, before Rangiku realizes just how weird he’s acting. “Homework.”

Her hands go on her hips and she eyes him from the corners of her eyes. “If you say so,” she says.

She doesn’t believe him. He can tell — not because he’s known her for years, but simply because he can’t lie to her.

As he tears his gaze away and turns to leave, she calls out to him. “Hey. Kira.” She has lit her cigarette again, intent on finishing it before she goes to get her own meal. She holds it in her right hand, letting the smoke flutter around her face like a fog. “Be careful out there, okay? It’s dangerous.”

He nods, absently, before confusion floods his gaze. Too bad. Rangiku is gone, hurried back inside the courtyard before he gets a chance to say anything else.


End file.
